When You Wish Upon A Death Star

Disney today announced the $4 billion acquisition of Lucasfilm, including the apple of George Lucas's eye, the Star Wars franchise.  According to USA Today, the acquisition concludes a year-and-a-half pursuit by Disney of the lucrative franchise.  Disney announced that they would begin production of a new Star Wars film immediately, with a release date sometime in 2015, with subsequent films every few years.  Three years turn-around isn't that much in the high-stakes world of multi-million films, and the expectation of something staggeringly good has created a surge of interest among fans.

io9 has already speculated about the possible direction future films could take, and have offered several thoughtful ideas.  Among the ideas for Star Wars VII are stories set in the Thrawn universe, following the exploits of a fledgling New Republic battling the deeply embedded forces of Admiral Thrawn.  The books offer ties to the Clone Wars, and having the benefit of a pre-existing story, are a strong bet for future films.  Written by sci-fi master Timothy Zahn, they're also the first foray by Lucasfilm into the Star Wars universe post-Jedi, what's come to be called the Expanded Universe.  I think this is the best bet for Disney story-tellers if they're looking for something quick and easy, with the benefit of "canon" status.

Other avenues, of course, are available, and speculation ranges from a Darth Vader centered movie, to a Boba Fett spin-off.  While I would love to see something featuring Mara Jada (Luke's eventual wife in the Expanded Universe), I can't imagine that anything set within a few years of Jedi would have the appeal of later stories.  An Old Republic movie might be appealing.  Seeing the Jedi in their prime sounds fun on paper, but stories of political intrigue are dubious at best.  Lucas already tried that route and it failed miserably; trying to recapture the grandeur and opulence of the Old Republic might be beyond Disney's grasp--although, they've surprised me before.

While I'm excited to see Star Wars go off in a new directions, I'm of two minds about the whole thing.  First, we know that Star Wars without George at the helm is not a bad thing.  In fact, neither Empire nor Jedi were directed by him and Empire is considered the strongest of the three.  But George represents a locus of vision; it's his world and we're all just playing in it.  Although he's said that he'll stay on as a creative consultant, the machinations of corporate greed will play a much stronger role.  Maybe we'll get something good, maybe we'll get Episodes I, II, and III.  But the fact that Empire and Jedi didn't have George at the helm gives me hope that something good will come out of this.  I've been saying for years that a Star Wars absent George, given the love and attention only a true fan can give, would make for better Star Wars films.

*Update:  According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lucas is donating all that money to education.  Who would have thought?  I wasn't really expecting that.

What do you think?  Excited, worried, irritated?  I've got room for rants in the comments section.  

The Many Faces of Sherlock Holmes . . . Sherlock and Elementary Review

"Elementary, my dear Watson."  We all know that phrase.  It's about as iconic as "All work and no play."  It also signals a revolution in the way stories are told, and the function of characters in a story.  While Poe might have Sir Arthur Conan Doyle beat by a few years, with the first detective story, Sherlock Holmes cemented the archetypes, tropes and general feel of detective stories until the present day.  The genius of Sherlock Holmes resides in his irascibility.  To put it bluntly, he's not a very likeable character.  Short tempered, arrogant, and a drug-addict, Sherlock Holmes represented a fundamentally different perspective on what we want in a hero.  We want him to succeed where others fail, especially if those others are representatives of a government or other authority.

The recent success of Sherlock Holmes in a variety of mediums has demonstrated the continued enjoyment we all derive from him.  Robert Downey Jr. is the iconic Sherlock of the modern era, one of the truest expressions of Doyle's know-it-all detective.  But that Sherlock is set in the era in which it was written, namely the late nineteenth century.  The question has been asked: Would Sherlock still be applicable in the modern era?  That is, in the light of DNA, fingerprinting (largely unknown to Doyle), a pervasive CCTV culture (if you set him in London), cell phones, lap-tops, instant access to boundless information via the Internet, would Sherlock still triumph?

According to "Sherlock," produced by the BBC and starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman, he can.  Not only that, he excels where Scotland Yard and London police fail precisely because of all those technological trappings.  The argument is that modern forensics have become so indoctrinated by their CSI gadgets that they've forgotten how to look at the evidence in front of them and use the computer God installed behind their eyes.  Cumberbatch's Sherlock is arrogant to the point of offensive, and know-it-all to the point of omniscience.  Yet the show makes a surprising effort to show the connections that Sherlock makes, highlighting the fact that he is far from superhuman, simply superhumanly observant.

Each episode is comprised of roughly an hour and a half and the extra time shows.  With nearly two shows packed in one, each episode unfolds like a movie, with time for witty dialogue and gradual reveals that aren't apparent from the beginning.  The principals, Cumberbatch and Freeman are convincing and drawn with a delicate brush that paints their relationship in subtle colors.  Most of the episodes (possibly all) are taken from the Doyle cannon, and updated to serve the story.  Hound of the Baskervilles makes an appearance, as does Irene Adler, the only woman famously to snare Sherlock Holmes.  It is intelligent, fun, and dangerously addictive.  Watch it only if you've got a few hours set aside to catch up on the whole thing at once.  Highly recommended.

Once you've taken care of Sherlock in modern London, the next obvious question is: What if he wasn't in London?  The producers of "Elementary," starring Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock and Lucy Liu as Watson (you read that right) answered that question by transferring Sherlock to New York and teaming him up with a counselor.  While Watson has always served as something of a confidante and counselor for Sherlock, providing a very real human connection, he has never actually been one.  Stretching the limits of creative license, Lucy Liu's Watson is indeed a doctor.  But her role is much more therapeutic than the Watson that Doyle intended.  While Miller's Sherlock is somewhat irritating, it comes across as petulant--throwing tantrums and acting in a generally childish way.  Nothing like the severe abrasiveness that Doyle seemed to have intended. 

Updating Sherlock to the modern era, transplanting him across the pond, and forcing him to deal with a type of violence seemingly unknown in London, "Elementary" further deviates by introducing new story-lines.  So far, neither Moriarty nor Irene Adler have made an appearance, and it's difficult to see how they would.  "Elementary" is a crime-procedural on the level of "CSI" or "Numbers" with a quirky character who bears almost no relation to the inimical Sherlock Holmes.  While the acting is somewhat amusing, the forty-minute run time of each episode restricts the masterful deduction for which Sherlock is known, making him seem nearly god-like in his observational skills.  Worst of all, "Elementary" seems to have copped several lines straight from "Sherlock," undermining its creative cachet.

Both "Sherlock" and "Elementary" pose interesting questions, and at least initially, "Elementary" looks to answer it more creatively and with a different panache.  But "Elementary" falls flat with limpid acting, a lack of creative story-telling and a boring disposition.  Don't waste your time.

Love them?  Hate them?  Let me know in the comments.

Sinister Rouge . . . Sinister Review

I love horror movies.  I love sitting in the dark waiting for the next big scare, the next terrible thing, the next dream-scarring fright.  I went in to "Sinister" with high hopes.  It's been getting a lot of word-of-mouth that it's the scariest thing since "The Ring," and the comparisons are apt.  First, it deals with a mysterious set of 8mm movies discovered in the attic of a home where a family was brutally murdered.  Second, it has a supernatural connection to a series of murders.  As the movie progresses, our protagonists discovers that a being of some sort is at every crime, and scrawled on the wall (or hood of a car) is a strange, satanic rune.  And, just to stress the similarity between "Sinister" and "The Ring," if you watch the movies, you give evil an entrance into your life.

But that's about where the similarities end.  "The Ring" was taut, frightening and genuinely disturbing.  "Sinister" is not.  The story itself has potential, and the protagonist has a shot at being fully fleshed-out.  Playing a failing true-crime novelist, Ethan Hawke moves his family to the home of a family hung in their backyard under grisly circumstances.  Desperate to revitalize his career, he's willing to risk his life, his sanity and ultimately the lives of his family for another chance at success.  Soon after arriving, he discovers a box of 8mm movies in the attic, along with projector.  Intrigued, he plays the first movie and discovers that its footage previously unknown of the hangings which left the house empty, and such a steal on the market.

Worse, there are more movies, all of them grisly, some of them unknown, and the crime-writer knows he's stumbled over something big.  This might be the turn he's been looking for.  Studying the new films, he discovers a terrifying presence in the background of each, something sinister that we eventually learn is an ancient god who is "The Eater of Children."  This entity somehow lures children to his realm where he spends eternity devouring their souls.  We're told that the image of this entity is all it takes to lure children to the ultimate demise, so throughout the movie, the audience is left with the expectation that somehow, one of Ethan Hawke's darlings might stumble over the picture.

Alas, they never do.  This major oversight is what ultimately ruined the movie for me.  While the pacing was slow, and the scares where telegraphed thirty seconds in advance, or highlighted by the null space over his shoulder, I could have ignored these film-academy errors if the story was tighter.  The acting was fine, nothing superb but certainly not disappointing.  But I'll say it again, it just wasn't that scary and the plot holes were just too glaring to overlook.

All in all, I wouldn't recommend this movie to a friend.

The Bad Girl's Guide to Camping . . . Cabin in the Woods Review

The Bad Girl's Guide to Camping:

1.  Establish which type of movie this is.  Is there another woman present, who can be characterized as

• Uptight, 
• Career Oriented, or 
• Old Maid Eligible?  

If you answered yes to any of these things, please answer the following questions.

• Is there a man present who she initially despises?  
• Perhaps she hates his guts, or thinks he's self-serving, arrogant, or in competition with her.  

If so, don't worry: you're in a romantic-comedy.  While this goes a long way to ensuring your long-term survival, you are, unfortunately, the foil.  You will never find true happiness.
2.  Having established that this is not a romantic comedy, please observe the following:

• Are you in a group of at least five people?
• If you are, is there another woman present you secretly (or publicly) deride as being prudish, goody-goody, or simply virginal?
• Are you on a back-road, have you traveled via back-roads, or have you encountered someone notable for the lack of social graces, teeth, or perhaps an eye?
• Can you classify the other members of your group as The Athlete, The Scholar, and The Fool?  

If you answered yes to these questions, then unfortunately, you're in a horror movie.  The aforementioned members of your group fulfill archetypal roles and since we have already identified that you are not The Athlete, Scholar, Fool or Virgin, you are, my dear, the Slut.  Or Whore, if you're so inclined.  This puts you in a bad way, since you will soon come to your end.

Depending on your locale, you may die in any number of ways:

• You may be decapitated.
• You may be drowned.
• You may be eaten.
• You may be buried alive.
• You may be impaled, flagellated, embalmed, disemboweled, or possibly even drowned in liquid wax.

However, you may avert any of these terrible ends by simply keeping your top on.  That seems to be the causative agent for death in most cases.

In case you're wondering, I learned all this through many years of careful observation.  First was Bruce Campbell demonstrating proper undead elimination techniques in "Army of Darkness."  Then came the terror of Jason Voorhees on Camp Crystal Lake in the Friday the 13th series.  Following that came a slew of slasher flicks from the 80s and 90s, culminating in the iconic "Cabin Fever."  Art, as they say, has reached its zenith when it becomes self referential.  Horror/slasher films have seemingly reached that point several times, but none have done it so admirably as "Cabin in the Woods."

Part homage, part celebration of camping horror, it sticks to the traditional set-up of five kids out for a lark in a remote, physically isolated part of the world where cell reception is spotty to absent.  Everyone is present: The Athlete, Scholar, Fool, Virgin and yes, The Whore.  If this was simply a rehash of time-worn tropes, however, it would have languished in obscurity.  Instead, writers Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard have constructed a loving homage to slasher flicks, while still presenting us with a fascinating and gruesome story. 

Saying much more would partly give away the twist (hardly a twist; it's announced from the beginning but we're not made fully aware of it for much of the film.)  However, despite the enjoyment I got from this movie, I have to comment that as far as acting goes, this film fails to elevate itself above traditional fare.  Chris Hemsworth (of Thor fame) is flat, his terror and grief unconvincing.  Fran Kranz is the standout as the stoner who saves the day (sort of) whose best lines are delivered with the whiny panache of the habitual pot smoker.  Both female leads felt rushed, and except for Anna Hutchison's make-out session with a wolf, we never got much from her.

But it was fun, gory and had an interesting twist at the end that, while not entirely compelling, was nevertheless not what I expected.  Shout-out to Lovecraft.  In all, I'd recommend this movie.

Let me hear what you thought of it in the comments below.

Does Iron Man Dream of Electric Sheep? . . . Or, Iron Man 3 Trailer

The first trailer for Iron Man 3 was released a few days ago.  It looks like the Iron Man platform has finally been weaponized, Tony Stark's under the knife to finally remove those pesky bits of shrapnel, and he's fretting over the carnage wrought in New York during the Avengers movie.  With all that on his plate, how can things get more tense? How about another terrorist leader with murky vocals threatening everyone he loves? 

Sound familiar?  If so, try not to think of Nolan's failure to properly dub Bane as any reason to think Marvel will make the same mistakes.  Lack of production oversight isn't really the problem at Marvel, since they've displayed a remarkable persistence of vision throughout the Iron Man franchise, and the burgeoning Thor, Hulk, and Captain America franchises.  All that being said, poor character development in Dark Knight Rises certainly was the bane of my movie-going experience (I crack myself up), but I'm looking forward to the gloss and shine of a Marvel production with Iron Man 3. 

Did you like Bane?  Hate him?  Just couldn't understand him?  Let me hear what you think in the comments.

A Justice League of Their Own

Legal problems have been holding Warner Bros. back from making Superman movies for years.  But last week, a key victory allows Warner Bros. to use Superman, and key elements from his mythos, in movies after 2013.  This is a huge boon for anyone hoping for a DC come-back in the face of the Marvel juggernaut that's been plowing through theaters.  With the success of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and a slew of others, superhero fans have been waiting for a DC rebuttal.  Except for the major success of Christopher Nolan's Batman, DC superheroes have failed to excite much attention.  All that could soon change, however, as plans for a Justice League movie are slated for summer 2015.  Warner Bros. is then hoping to spin out each superhero in their own movies, eschewing Marvel Studio's success teaming up their heroes after the fact. 

Though Christopher Nolan has signed on to produce the new Superman movie, Man of Steel, he has not signed on to produce the Justice League; furthermore, Christian Bale will not reprise Batman, and we can't expect Henry Cavill (if Man of Steel doesn't flop) to play the role of Superman.  Wonder Woman is up in the air, and no one seems to care about the Green Lantern, even with Ryan Reynolds filling out his tights.

While I'd love to see an adult treatment of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, I'm not actually excited to see this movie.  The Justice League has always seemed kind of hokey to me, the writing is barely tolerable, and the basic premise is just kind of shallow.  I get that it worked well in the 70s and the 80s, and the cartoon spin-off is one of the highlights of my childhood.  But it's not a memory that I want to revisit.  Warner Bros. have their work cut out for them to get me interested, but I'm looking forward to see what they're planning.

What are your thoughts?  Looking forward to it?  Love it, hate it, not really interested?  Let me know in the comments.

Argo See This Movie . . . Argo Review

Go see this movie.  Seriously.  Just stop whatever you're doing, find a theater, and go see Argo.  In 1979, Iranian revolutionaries captured the American embassy and held all but six of the embassy staff prisoner for 444 days.  Those six are the focus of this movie.  Ben Affleck directs himself as Tony Mendez, an exfil expert at the CIA in charge of extracting those six.  Undaunted by the Department of State's daring plan to drop bicycles into Tehran and hoping the six could bike 300 miles to the Turkish border, he concocts the daring plan to sneak the six out as members of a Canadian film crew in Tehran scouting locations. 

The movie is at turns tense, terrifying and amusing.  The attention to detail was amazing, as an afterword during the credits attests.  Except for Affleck (an East-coaster with about as much Hispanic blood as I do), each of the characters were perfectly cast to maximize physical resemblance.  The acting was superb--never over-the-top or maudlin, with a kind of underwhelming tension that never abated.  The danger was very real; at any moment, you felt, the six would be captured. 

One reviewer has noted that you should see this movie because it dramatizes history in such a way that history becomes interesting.  While I concede his point, I think the value of this movie lies in something more than its dramatization of history.  The value is the way in which it still informs foreign and current affairs.  If I had begun this review with a blurb about Middle Eastern revolutionaries capturing an American embassy, I could easily have invoked the destruction of the American embassy in Benghazi, and assassination of the American ambassador.  "Argo" counsels reactionary responses to violence; it challenges the basic assumptions about how nations respond to violence, and exposes the viewer to a subtler understanding about the inherent difficulties of dealing with sovereign nations. 

While the heart of the movie is rescuing the Houseguests, so called because of their extended stay in the Canadian ambassador's home, the periphery belongs both the revolutionaries in Iran and the strange world of Hollywood politics.  Neither are overblown, and each is given just enough screen-time to demonstrate the absurdity and seriousness of each. 

I highly recommend this movie.

An Act of Valor . . . Do Americans Have Anything Interesting To Say?

I've been reading a lot recently.  Some of it for class, some for fun, a great percentage somewhere in the middle; some of it because it sounded interesting, but it definitely not just on a lark. 

A niggling feeling has been tickling me in the back of the brain and I only recently got a finger on it.  All the really interesting stuff that I've been reading--all the stories with something to say--aren't written by Americans.  Sure, we write some great stuff--our prose is fantastic and our grasp of the language proves we can stand on our own, at least in terms of quality.  But there's something absent from the content.  Then it hit me.  We really don't have anything worth saying. 

There's been some great stuff out of Nigeria about decolonization; some great stuff out of England about the growing animosity between Europeans and Muslim immigrants.  Some really fantastic stuff from Germany about the growing debt crisis and their disenfranchisement about the euro; and while all of that sounds non-fiction, its couched in clearly fictional terms.  A young Muslim man in London just trying to get by; a businessman in Nigeria yearning for the life of a pseudo-aristocrat in Lagos; a German right-wing woman hating just about everybody and the boy she loves.  Good stuff.  But Americans are obsessed with the domestic.  Midwest life, baseball games, and all the drama that revolves around the kitchen table.  While these are worthy stories, and reveal a great deal about American private life and private struggle, they really have no point.  They illuminate the inner life, but fail to cast light on the what happens beyond the kitchen walls.

Let's face it.  We have a lot to write about.  We're in the coming era of American imperialism, standing at the precipice of empire in a way we haven't since 1898.  But we're doing it covertly, so as not to arouse public suspicion.  In 1898 at least we used the word "empire" to describe our acquisition of the Philippines.  Now we couch it in terms of global wars against terrorism. 

Terrorism is high on our minds.  I recently saw "Act of Valor," the 2012 action flick touted as the only film starring active duty special operators, and it got me thinking about how we perceive ourselves in the world.  Thomas Jefferson wanted to see the United States encompass the entire continent, spreading outward as an "empire of republicanism."  From the very first moment, American exceptionalism was embedded in the American psyche; it was in our rhetoric, politics and mythology.  We still see that exceptionalism today, but in a new way.  Today, we are the policeman of the world, a monolithic hegemon tasked with enforcing not only laws, but western ideology.  That sounds a little high-blown, I know, so I'll explain.

In the late eighteenth-century, the slave trade became unpopular.  Then, in the first years of the nineteenth, it was outlawed entirely.  It was abolished in Britain, in the United States, and throughout Europe.  If you know anything about the African slave-trade, however, you know that the major link in the Atlantic triangle was shipping.  Slaves were bought in Africa, shipped across the Atlantic and sold in America.  Shipping was the key element of the slave trade.  Without a working navy to police its vessels, a state was unable to enforce laws banning the slave trade.  Britain, as the single power capable of patrolling such a vast area, and the resources to devote to ideological goals even when it and Europe was embroiled in the Napoleonic wars.  Among other things, it stopped, interdicted and seized ships of foreign powers.  Think about the implications of that: one of the primary reasons we're told for the War of 1812 was British seizures of American vessels; and yet, to enforce our own laws against the importation of slavery, we needed British hegemony of the seas.

Fast forward to today and "Act of Valor."  In that movie, a number of groups are interdicted by American special forces around the world.  Set in motion by a terrorist bombing in a Philippine international school where the U.S. ambassador is killed, the movie quickly hops around the planet in pursuit.  In Costa Rica, a CIA operative has made a connection between a drug smuggler to Chechen separatists who is planning to smuggle super-suicide bombers into the United States.  Call in the SEALs.  The movie moves from Costa Rica, to Africa, to the South Pacific, to Mexico, to Mexicali.  Somewhere in the middle is narrative, but it's so poorly acted that we're glad when the SEALs just start shooting people again.  While the action is fun, what really stands out for me are things the filmmakers probably hadn't intended.

First is the outstanding superiority of American technology.  That's really what we've based our war-making capability upon and seeing it highlighted here is outstanding.  What makes it all the more interesting, however, is the lack of highlighting that goes on in the movie.  Technology is present, but only in a behind-the-scenes kind of way.  Drones, unmanned aerial vehicles, spy-planes are the extent of it.  If you count optics on the guns and night-vision, that about sums up the level of technology.  But it is devastating, nonetheless.

What really stood out, though, was the quickness with which forces could operate around the globe.  I'm told the world is a pretty big place, and yet special operators are boots on the ground yesterday.  When SEALs infiltrate Costa Rica they are supported and extracted by two gun-boats dropped by helicopter.  Infiltrating Africa by mini-sub, and then Mexico by boat, the American domination of the seas through our superior logistical capability clearly stands out.

None of these factors are really highlighted, as I've said, and that says something to me.  That we can take our outstanding superiority for granted informs both my take-away of the movie, but larger matters about American storytelling and my earlier statement that Americans really have nothing interesting to say.  The final line of the movie goes something like this: War is a matter of will.  The side most willing to go the farthest is the side that will win.  That is saying something.  Certainly, it's an axiomatic statement, but what does it mean?  At its core, it's a Manichean statement about good and evil; it's an ideology that permits only a single winner.  It's a statement that places everyone who is not for you against you.

This movie, for all its gusto, says something.  This wasn't meant to be a subtle movie, but I wonder if Americans have anything else to say about our hegemony, our impending empire, our responsibility to the world, as well as positions that may be as damaging to us as Britain's moral resolve to stamp out slavery while Napoleon beat at their gates was to them.

What do you think?  I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Carrie's Back . . . Don't Go To Prom

With the new release of the "Carrie" teaser, I'm officially excited to see this movie.  Apparently this has been in the works for a few months now, but this is the first time I've heard of it.  And let me tell you, from what I've been reading, this movie is going to be awesome.  It does something so many Stephen King movies have failed to do: be faithful to the text.  With so much of the story a collage of newspaper articles, interviews and other voices, it's good to hear them put back in the story.  And let's be honest, we all love how creepy Chloe Grace Moretz was in "Let Me In," so we know she's got the chops.  Keep an eye out, and stop bullying kids in the locker room.

The Amyrlin Seat Vs. The Kai

This is the second installment of my fictional character battles!  Skeletor won handily to Darth Vader in the first go and I decided for this round to trod a little farther afield.  I've settled on the Kai vs. the Amyrlin Seat.  Each are leaders in their respective worlds. 

The Kai is found on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and is the spiritual leader of Bajor, a small planet with minor economic and strategic importance thrust into the galactic arena when a wormhole is discovered linking the Federation with the Gamma Quadrant.  While the Kai is the spiritual leader of the Bajorans, she kicks butt as a symbol of her people and a locus of resistance when Bajor is conquered by an alien race.  While the position of Kai was not considered women-only (Vedek Bareil was considered before a scandal forced him to concede in favor of Vedek Winn) it was nevertheless portrayed in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine television series by two strong women  While she has no powers per se, beyond her own personal charisma, but she can read your pah, which might be your spirit, your future, or some combination thereof.  

The Amyrlin Seat, on the other hand, is by definition a position which can be filled only a woman.  Like the Pope, the Amyrlin must demonstrate her femininity through a ritual designed to prove her womanhood.  Hailing from the realm of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, she has little, or no, direct political power, but woe to the leaders who ignore her advice.  Shrewd, cunning and possessed of the One Power, she could literally burn you to a crisp or warp your mind to her own devices if she wasn't proscribed by the Three Oaths, magically binding her to never tell a lie, never make magical weapons, and never use the One Power as a weapon (except against baddies or in defense of her or another's life). 

As symbols, both women possess extraordinary charisma.  Their prestige is unmatched, and where they lead, many (if not all) follow.  But pitted against one another, who would prevail?  The Kai, who, with no real political power, still manages to exhort her people to a multi-generational guerrilla conflict against their oppressors?  Or the Amyrlin Seat, whose manipulation of events through cunning and intrigue have made her feared and beholden?  Let me hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Guys and Girls . . . And Guys?

The Economist's Johnson, named after Samuel Johnson of dictionary fame, recently weighed in on the (primarily) American use of "guys" as a vocative to refer to groups of both men and women.  As a description of actual usage, it doesn't necessarily promote this sort of gender-exclusive reference (please read my sarcasm) but it does make an interesting point that "guys" can be used to refer to groups of both young men and young women.  He makes a careful distinction between "guys" as a vocative, and "guy" as a noun, since "Hey, guys," can be mixed-gender, while "that guy" cannot.  (Although, if I said a group of guys, I'm more than likely referring to a group of men.)

The really interesting point he makes is the distinction between "girl" referring to female children, and a girl as a young woman.  The distinction boils down to formality, apparently, as in formal settings you would never refer to a young woman as "girl," it being condescending.  However, when referring in an informal setting to a woman of post-voting age, but not quite age-of-responsibility (wherever that may lie), she is often referred to as a "girl."  It's an interesting perspective from a non-American viewpoint.

Looper Review . . . With Diagrams

"Looper" is, at least nominally, a time travel sci-fi.  I say "nominally" because many of the tropes you'd expect from a sci-fi (emphasis on setting, technology or exposition) are absent and the movie is primarily focused on how characters drive the plot.  While time-travel is both present and necessary, it drives the plot about as much as a cell phone.  Technology, in this instance, is something taken for granted, just another piece of the fictional world Joe, our protagonist, inhabits.

The basic premise is that sometime in the future (2060s or so) time travel is invented.  And it's immediately declared illegal and heavily regulated.  The only people that have access to time travel are the people willing to bend and break laws.  Hence, crime syndicates.  Also, in the future our worst paranoiac fears have been confirmed and we're all tracked by some sort of implant that makes it near impossible to get away with committing murder.  Here's where looping comes in.  The mob has figured out a way of offing its enemies by sending them back in time to be killed and disposed of.  Their assassins in the past?  Loopers.

Now, in the future, it's so illegal to have time travel that once a looper runs into the present (the guy in the past meets up with himself in the future) he's snatched up, sent back in time, and killed by himself.  It's called "closing the loop" and you get a nice bonus and the knowledge that you've got exactly thirty years to live.  While it's never explained in the movie, time travel seems to have an effective range of only thirty years; that's how far back you go, and that's how far back anyone seems interested in going.  Again, we're never really told how time travel works, but its not very important to the story.

As you can already guess, Joe closes his loop.  Bruce Willis pops out of thin air.  But instead of killing himself, future Joe (or Old Joe, as he's referred to) gets the upper hand on his younger self and escapes.  This is sort of a conundrum for Young Joe.  As long as his older self is running around, the syndicate in his present thinks he's gone rogue and will do everything they can to hunt him down and make sure Old Joe gets dead.  When a prior looper fails to close his loop we're shown very convincingly how the mob makes sure knowledge of the future stays secret.

If "Looper" was only about Young Joe hunting down Old Joe and trying to get his life back, it might have stood on its own, but the screenwriters add another wrinkle that really makes this movie shine.  In the future, someone is steadily killing every other crime lord and assuming power, including power over time travel.  The first thing this person does is close every loop they can find.  In this instance, Joe experiences the power and ruthlessness of the new syndicate and resolves to hunt down the new boss, called The Rainmaker, in the past and eliminate her.

This is the real story at the heart of the plot.  It's the eternal question: if you had the opportunity to kill Hitler as a child, would you do it?  This tension drives the heart of the story, and is the central question continually posed to the Young and Old Joes.

One of the primary distinctions to "Looper" though, is the way in which it deals with its time travel.  (Warning: SPOILERS ahead.)  Most time-travel stories deal with the messy business of past and future by maintaining a strict philosophy of time travel.  That is, one of two scenarios are usually invoked.  First, that what happens in the past always happens.  Noah Iliinsky, writing for Wired, calls this immutable time.  The second option is malleable time, where the flow of time is changeable in some regard and what you do in the past affects future events.  Certain notable exceptions tend to prove the rule, namely "Groundhog Day" with it's closed-time loop, and "Inception" with the premise that the perception of time is all in the mind.

"Looper" makes an additional exception, in that while some events are modifiable, others are not.  In Dr. Who parlance, they are "fixed points in time."  That leads to interesting speculation as to whether or not the ending of the movie even mattered.  Maybe some things are simple meant to be, or have affected the lives of so many people that they cannot easily be altered.  The inertia of time is against it, so to speak.

Regardless "Looper" is a taut, emotional film full of action, violence and just a little bit of nudity with all the mind-bendyness we love in our sci-fi.  I give it a hearty two-thumbs up and would definitely recommend it to a friend.

Osama Review . . . Donnie Darko meets L.A. Confidential

Osama, by Lavie Tidhar, is the story of Joe, a surname-less detective hired by a mysterious woman to track down Mike Longshott, author of Osama: Vigilante.  Written in a kind of post-noir Chandler-esque chic, it quickly becomes apparent that Joe inhabits a world markedly different from our own, where certain notable events either never happened, or went off on an oblique.  Tidhar's sense of place is impeccable, from the rain-swept streets of Vientiane to the wilds of London (on both sides of the surreal), to Kabul, where Tidhar evokes ten or more years of bombings compressed into a single instant--the absurdity of this moment,  and others, drawn out by snippets throughout the book.

Absurdity seems to be what this book is about; the absurdly disproportionate response by a superpower against terrorists a world away, the absurdity of a war against terror, the absurdity of men destroying themselves as a last gasp at communicating their own creed.  Mike Longshott is the absurd moniker taken by an Afghan man who glimpses the world beyond the veil, our own world, and attempts to comprehend it absurdity by capturing it in fiction.

On the surface, this is the story of one man's search for Mike Longshott, but classifying this subtle and haunting book as alternative history or science fiction is to miss the point.  Tidhar manages to blur the real and the unreal in such a way that truth and fiction combine in such a way that we're unable to distinguish one from the other.  And maybe that's the point.  Because by the end we're left with a man who's seen beyond the veil of the real into a world of gross surveillance, paranoia, and killing for the sake of terror.  Ultimately, Osama is a haunting soliloquy about this strange new world none of us could have foreseen and hardly any of us understands.

I would recommend this book to a friend.

Bond Is Back! . . . Skyfall Teasers

I'm a huge sucker for Daniel Craig's leaner, meaner, post-9/11 James Bond and have loved the introductory movies: "Casino Royale" and "Quantum of Solace."  Skyfall looks to be everything I hoped it would be.  Here's the new TV trailer.  I'm excited for theaters.

Nice Day For a Red Wedding . . . Game of Thrones Season 3!

Speculation is rife that Game of Thrones will soon begin shooting the notorious Red Wedding sequence from the third novel.  The speculation began when, Extras NI—the main casting agency for extras for the production—released this announcement:

CELLISTS - brief:
- Seeking MALE only cellists. Must have experience.
- Ideally men with medieval or period faces (i.e long hair & beard) but not essential.
- ATTN: maria@extrasni.com & include
—A clear & current photograph (if you have video footage, please include it/attach link)
—Your measurements including height, waist, chest & shoe size
—Your level of experience and/or CV
- You must be fully available for filming on the 15th through to the 19th of October. If successful, you will be contacted. Rate of pay will be confirmed at this point.

AMPUTEES - brief:
- Seeking LEG ONLY, MALE AMPUTEES.
- ATTN: maria@extrasni.com & include
—A clear and current photograph
—Your measurements including height, waist, chest & shoe size
—A clear description regarding where your limb is missing eg. at knee, at ankle, etc
- You must be fully available for filming on the NIGHT of October 12th.
- You must be OK and comfortable with filming a scene within the context of a battle where your leg has been injured. Prosthetic makeup will be applied as though your leg has newly been severed. We understand that this is not for everyone, so please only apply if you are happy to participate.

Westeros.org has speculated this can only mean the Red Wedding sequence from the third novel, the "pivotal moment in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, the thing that makes it what it is."  One hopes the scene will be done well, culminating in a piece of television lore.

Hey, Look! . . . A New Short Story

Colonization of Time

This is how the man of Nigeria died: With melancholy and great difficulty in a London bordello. His name was Mister Johnson, and he had come to London looking for Mister John White, an Englishman who sold wrist and pocket watches, chronometers, time-pieces, clocks both bedside and grandfather; brass clocks, watches with leather straps, and great oaken cabinets for heavy, swaying, swinging pendulums sold by the photograph, since they were too large to pack away in his leather travel satchel. At first, when John White had come to Mister Johnson's village, he had been ignored and avoided. Sometimes he had traveled with other white men, who wore white clothes, or sometimes suits which had once been black but had been bleached by the sun, stripped of pigment until the cloth was the same gray as the clayey mud churned by passing carts, veined by soil leached from the fields.

Then John White came to him at the funeral and professed the open satchel where watches clung to leather straps or lay like virgins on beds of red velvet. John White said, “Who wouldn't want a watch?” Mister Johnson looked away and thought to summon memories of the dead.

The priest, quiet for a Frenchman, who spoke passable English, stood over the three small coffins and said, “How shall they believe of which they have not heard?”

John White then took out a pocket watch with a hunter case. It was gold and gleamed in the stolid sunlight. “Have you ever considered how much time you lose not knowing what time it exactly is? With a piece like this never again will you have recourse to the sun to divine night from day. Always will you know when you should sleep, wake, eat and work. Never an idle moment.”

The priest neared the end of his benediction. “To everything there is a season,” he began, and then closed the book and intoned, “What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth? I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. Amen.”

The flock of women in mourning black fragmented, some following the priest, most drifting down the cemetery hill, and Mister Johnson turned to go with them. John White plodded after, taking great sideways steps with his hands curled round the wooden handles of his bag to hold it open. “Look here,” John White said. “I realize the gravity of the occasion, and I would never presume to impinge on your mourning, but really you must apprehend the boon I represent. A time-piece, man! Even you have to appreciate something of such fine craftsmanship.”

Mister Johnson paused to placate one of the mourning women, who'd turned to frown at John White. “I have no interest in such things,” Mister Johnson said.

“Of course you do.” Now that they had stopped, John White set the bag on the ground and withdrew two watches, one on a long brass fob, the other thick as an egg. “Hour and minute hands may satisfy most, but I can see you are a man of fine and discriminating taste, and ordinary features will not suffice. Indeed, with this watch you'll even save time.” He held up the watch with the crystal face and brass fob. “Never again oversleep, or arrive early or linger a moment too long over an aperitif.”

“Go away.”

John White stood while Mister Johnson turned to go, the large watch still in his hand, the bit of fob dangling out of his palm like the final breath of a child. “What about a watch that will tell you when you are to die?”

“Such things are not so.”

“Why not? The moments we divide into seconds and minutes, but really can you tell me that a moment is not something more? I can see as the hand turns and perceive time between. With a watch that tick-tocked fast enough, divining morning from afternoon from evening, surely the genius of man can create a watch fine enough to distinguish life from death. It is Swiss.”

Mister Johnson looked at the watch, then at the face of the Englishman. His features were set like a table for supper; nothing askew. Finally, Mister Johnson smiled, “I know my sums and my letters, and I know also when I am being mocked. No.” Unlike Lot's wife, when he went, he did not look back.

***

In Lagos, a man told Mister Johnson that he should help protect their city London from the enemy. He said that the native was being ungrateful if he did not fight. So Mister Johnson went and put his name in a book and was festooned with a brass numbered ticket and given a trench watch.

Trains came. They began in the distance while the minute hand trembled at the top or bottom of the station clock and ended as the second hand stole after and then the train doors opened when the two met like lovers reunited at the XII or the VI. Mister Johnson went somewhere. The air was cold. Azure sky. A color unlike the sun-bleached whiteness over his home. They put him on a ship with other men from Lagos and with men from Bassa Province, from the Benin and Sapele Districts; men from Zungero, Lokoja and Kano, as well as Warri, Calabar and Onitsha. Christian and Musulman. They disembarked somewhere else, where the air was colder still and often it rained.

The mud was ocher and ruddy and a kind of rust. In it he saw pebbles, stones, the coarse grains of sand that glittered whenever the sun broke through clouds so thick and dark he came to believe that they captured the great clods of dirt cast heavenward when the bombs exploded. The shells had a kind of odd precision, a thump thump thumpthump that was not unlike the pattering of his heart. The tick of his watch. He stared at the second hand while his feet sank into the mud, while he leaned into the muddy walls and felt himself sink deeper into the mud; while the unseeing eyes stared out at him, bony fingers clutching the mud, but even they gradually sank into the mud. The war would end when everyone sank into the mud.

An Englishman looked at his pocketwatch. Men panted and gasped. Rain fell. Shells rained down. Silence reigned between the bursts, before ears stuffed and muffled realized the shelling had stopped and men tried to rein in their fear. The fob dangled from the Englishman's palm like a sob half-gasped.

He wondered: is this my time?

***

In Paris Mister Johnson saw a man dying in the street. A young woman crouched beside him in a dress like a silhouette. He was much older and his hat had come off his head, lying forlorn in the gutter while the murmur of lookers-on was like a worried bee-hive. It was after the war and people congregated as though it had never occurred.

When the ambulance cart finally arrived and a man emerged in white frock, he knelt over the dying man and grasped the dying man's wrist. The ambulance orderly removed a pocket watch and looked thoughtful, then nodded and put it away. Somewhere between the ticks the old man had died. As ineffable as the span between I and II, life passed into death.

***

“Is he here?” Mister Johnson asked Richmond Draper, the man who rented a downstairs room from the widowed Dame Roger, whose husband had simply failed to awaken one morning. Her two other tenants were Susanne and Mary, who shared a room and offered illicit favors to men for seven shillings three after 6, post meridian, until 10:30 when Jack Payne and his Dance Orchestra played on BBC radio. Dame Roger was a kind woman. As he lay dying, she charged him three-quarters for his board.

“Your son has been sent for,” Richmond Draper replied. He was an anxious man, with the sort of drooping, splotched face Mister Johnson had come to associate with Englishmen who'd never left London.

Mister Johnson shook his head. “Is it time?”

“I should think so,” Richmond Draper said, looking at the wrist watch he set every morning to the tolling of Big Ben. The salesman had told him, there is no finer time-piece in all of Britain. A perpetual calendar, and crystal mechanism accurate to the millisecond assured that Richmond Draper would never miss afternoon tea or forget leap year. “Any time now.”

“But you don't know,” Mister Johnson said.

“Really, how can any man know? That is for the Lord and not for anyone else.” He looked at his wrist watch again. “But really, I must be going. Time and tide and all that.”

Mister Johnson turned his head to face the window, where sunlight played against filigrees of cloud and he imagined he could hear the soft rumble of the underground and the bang of workmen pounding out new lines to Piccadilly and the shuffle of feet along walkways and up and down stairs like the grumbling of stones beneath the waves; and as he lay there he heard the tick of the grandfather clock in the foyer, and the clatter of some bit of piping and underneath all that the slow turn of the world.

And he imagined, or liked to believe, that somewhere far away a man woke with the sun, slept when he was tired and when he was hungry broke bread.

This is how the man of Nigeria died.

Star Trek Into Darkness Teasers . . . Team Coco

 So after that gaffe with Karl Urban leaking the antagonist for the upcoming Star Trek 2, J.J. and team have commenced a wild teaser campaign that culminated a few nights ago with J.J. Abrams unveiling some footage from the movie on Conan.  Unfortunately, it consisted entirely of only three frames from the movie.  Yep, that's the totality of it up at the top.  It's Spock.  In a volcano.  In a crazy suit.  Here's the entire Conan clip:

Thanks to Tor.com for the heads-up.

Man Booker Prize Shortlist

http://www.themanbookerprize.com

The Man Booker Prize long list consisted of quite a few gems, and I'm glad to see the shortlist parse that down to something that truly shines.  While this is a list comprised of writers who published in the British Commonwealth, most of the titles will be available in the United States in the forthcoming months.  Only The Lighthouse by Alison Moore without a publisher in the United States, but you can find it on Kindle. 

The Man Booker shortlist this year is comprised of:

Author, Title (Publisher)
Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists (Myrmidon Books)
Deborah Levy, Swimming Home (And Other Stories/Faber & Faber)
Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies (Fourth Estate)
Alison Moore, The Lighthouse (Salt)
Will Self, Umbrella (Bloomsbury)
Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis (Faber & Faber)

This is the 44th year the prize has been awarded, celebrating excellence in authors of the British Commonwealth and the winner will be announced Tuesday, October 16th.  According to Peter Stothard, Chair of judges, the books were chosen based on the power of their prose.  "We loved the shock of language shown in so many different ways and were exhilarated by the vigour and vividly defined values in the six books that we chose – and in the visible confidence of the novel's place in forming our words and ideas.”

Nazis . . . In Space!

Well, the dark side of the moon actually.  This looks like both satire, parody and awesome.  It was released in early April 2012, but without theaters it has received very little press.  Head over to their website and demand to see it in a town near you. 

A S.H.I.E.L.D. To Watch Over Us

The main characters for Joss Whedon's S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show were just released.  Thanks to TV Line for the breakdown of the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Division's crew:

• Skye – This late-20s woman sounds like a dream: fun, smart, caring and confident – with an ability to get the upper hand by using her wit and charm.
• Agent Grant Ward – Quite the physical specimen and “cool under fire,” he sometimes botches interpersonal relations. He’s a quiet one with a bit of a temper, but he’s the kind of guy that grows on you.
• Agent Althea Rice – Also known as “The Calvary,” this hard-core soldier has crazy skills when it comes to weapons and being a pilot. But her experiences have left her very quiet and a little damaged.
• Agent Leo Fitz and Agent Jemma Simmons – These two came through training together and still choose to spend most of their time in each other’s company. Their sibling-like relationship is reinforced by their shared nerd tendencies – she deals with biology and chemistry, he’s a whiz at the technical side of weaponry.

Sufficed it to say that their blurbs probably aren't doing them justice.  Following closely on the heels of The Avenger's big-screen success, Whedon and ABC are taking a big gamble that superheroes will translate to the small screen.  Actually, scratch that.  These aren't superheroes per se.  They're agents of an NGO with the power of a first-world nation and the cajones of the mossad.  But while they inhabit a world full of superpowered baddies, they themselves aren't particularly spectacular.  In the comics, and indeed, in Avengers and many of Marvel tie-ins, the agents serve as foils to the hero.  How they'll manage to eke a television series out them is anyone's guess.

But I'll be glad to find out. 

The Transhumanist Agenda . . . H+ Update

I've been away from the interwebs for a while now, so I haven't had the time to catch up on H+, the web series by Bryan Singer.  But now that I'm back, I thought I'd give the next couple episodes a go and see how they fare.  Before I talk about episodes 10-15 (where I am, even though there are now twenty episodes released), I wanted to brush up on what transhumanism is actually all about. 

I remember reading K. Eric Drexler's groundbreaking work, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology and feeling the exhilaration of knowing I could see this strange new era during my own lifetime.  Yeah, it was science fiction, but the best kind: It's the kind that comes true.

Later, I was introduced to the idea of the singularity through Ray Kurzweil's popular book, The Singularity is Near.  Using a modified version of Moore's Law (which basically states that computing speed/power will double every 18 months) Kurzweil predicts that soon we will reach a level in which technology could actively shape human biology.  The blurb on the cover makes his aims obvious: "When Humans Transcend Biology."  The singularity is described as the point at which human beings become something else; they would be fundamentally unrecognizable if Shakespeare somehow managed to time travel to the present and witness them.  This fundamental re-ordering of the human system--for better or worse--is the hallmark feature of transhumanism, and its perils lie at the foundation of Bryan Singers's web-series H+.  Not coincidentally, H+ is also the self-applied moniker that Transhumanists use to describe their own beliefs.  

Transhumanism basically boils down to making the world better through technology.  Actually, that doesn't really cover it.  Transhumanism is about making people better through technology.  By eliminating aging, disease and many of the biological markers of the physical existence, transhumanists believe that the world will be a fundamentally better place by a more active reliance on technology.

Humanity has always been defined by its access to technology and innovation.  One of the earliest indications of human superiority was access to fire, which early human used to devastatingly effective use.  Combined with access to weaponry, early humans then acquired a ready food staple; this in turn allowed human beings the necessary access to caloric surplus which allows for greater population density; this in turn leads to the stratification of society necessary for the complex cultural hierarchy in which we find ourselves today.

To say that technology is bad for people is simply counter-factual.  We have always relied on our technology to survive and thrive.  The goals of transhumanism seem to be the same goals that human beings have always had.  Immortality, or at least a life bereft of disease, hunger and want, are the focus of our earliest myths.  Indeed, this urge to return to the Garden may be one of the defining features of human culture. 

Most philosophers, theologians, and thinkers have focused on human culture, however, as the path to this return.  Many religions focus on the basic flaw in the individual human.  Perfection is achieved, in most cases, by an active denial of the individual in favor of the community.  By preaching a cultural revival, as it were, humanity could then find itself in a single accord and many of the social evils would be eliminated.  Transhumanists take a somewhat different tack, believing that technology can offer a path toward perfection without the discipline required to modify both individual and cultural behavior.

This is basically where H+ the series takes us.  The promise is the elimination of disease through implanted nanoprobes, which can actively monitor our health and make corrections and modifications when necessary.  This laudable goal was then itself modified when a whole new technology was introduced allowing human beings immediate access to the internet through their implants.  I'm still not sold on the idea of having the internet directly in my head, and I somehow think that large segments of the population will have the same qualms.  There seems to be a fundamental divide between technology that monitors and improves health and one that lets us watch funny YouTube clips all day.

But the premise of the show is interesting, nonetheless.  What happens when some ubiquitous piece of technology goes awry?  In this case, killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of users?

Episodes 10-15 pick up once more in the underground parking structure at San Fransisco International Airport, where we are left in the aftermath of a failed attempt to save someone who was left comatose--but not quite dead--when his H+ went berserk.  It was gritty, human and compelling.  And then it ended.  Just when the best dramatic moments were beginning, the episode ended and we cut once more to another story.  This time, in Helsinki, where undercover cop Topi Kuusela is trying to uncover a hacker menace by infiltrating the life of master hacker, Manta, who seems plagued by a mysterious disease which leave three raised bumps on the inside of her wrist.

Quickly we jump between India, Italy and San Fransisco where nothing much is revealed and as soon as we start to care, we jump again.  This is the underlying, pervasive flaw in the entire endeavor.  It lacks staying-power.  While the producers have said repeatedly that this is for the benefit of the viewer--the episodes can be arranged in whatever order you would like to watch them--it reveals a critical flaw in the execution.  Storytelling is about people overcoming obstacles.  We like to see our heroes prevail.  But by undermining the connection just being established, the viewer is left apathetic.  Our curiosity is piqued, and then crushed--repeatedly.  H+ fails as a story because viewers simply don't care.

On that note, however, it is interesting and the plot is compelling.  The characters are necessarily caricatures and the pacing is ridiculous.  Nonetheless, as it progresses, I've become interested in figuring out what's going on.  The best bet, however, might be to watch them all in a single go on a pretty quick internet connection (the wait time is unendurable and commercials intersperse each episode).  So, my provisional review still stands, but I think you'll get the most enjoyment out of it in a year or so.

It's Even Better in the Original Klingon

Now I just wish I knew what Gangnam Style was.

Persons of Interest . . . Of Interest?

Last year, a new show popped on CBS about a guy who could see the future and wanted to use this amazing ability to help people.  Sound familiar?  That's what I thought, too.  Wasn't this a re-make of just about every sci-fi primetime television show, ever?  The twist, I guess, is that the ability to see the future isn't supernatural.  It's technological.  Seems a Great Man of Science invented a machine that can sift through the myriad signals floating through the ether and detect patterns.  Sometimes these patterns discern danger, and here's where Jesus steps in.  Yep, they got Jim Caviezel to save the day.  Nothing about this particular synopsis seemed compelling, and after the first episode I let it drop.

Then I read today that this was the show that every free-thinking, green-blooded sci-fi fan should be watching.  Based on a script initially developed by J.J. Abrams and Jonathan Nolan, it seems that early reviewers and audiences received it very well.  While I cannot say that I was especially blown away by my first encounter with the show, it does seem to be on Netflix at the moment, so I'll let you know what I think in a few episodes.