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Year: 2021

Goth Chick News: Welcome to the Blumhouse…

Goth Chick News: Welcome to the Blumhouse…

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Though I can’t say I love everything Jason Blum produces, I would say that if he ever calls the Black Gate office looking for me, someone bloody well transfer him to my cell phone pronto.

Though Blum has been the driving force behind nearly 200 films dating back to 1995, it was when he created his own micro-budget company, Blumhouse Productions, in 2000 that he finally had the creative freedom to scare the living crap out of us. Blum’s low budget model launched his horror career with a serious winner. Paranormal Activity cost $15K to make thanks to Blum borrowing a location and camera equipment, and paying two of his friends $500 each to star.

Flash forward a few years to when Paramount acquired the U.S. rights for $350K. PA went on to pull in $193 million worldwide, making this the second most profitable film ever made based on a return of investment, behind only The Blair Witch Project. Word is that during PA’s first test screenings, people started leaving the theater. Blum thought he had made a flop, only to discover that people left the auditorium because they couldn’t handle the intensity of the scares.

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Fantasia 2021, Part XX: The 12 Day Tale Of The Monster That Died In Eight

Fantasia 2021, Part XX: The 12 Day Tale Of The Monster That Died In Eight

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In 2020 a group of Japanese directors launched ‘Kaiju Defeats Covid,’ a viral scheme in which kaiju fans were encouraged to send in clips of themselves using the kaiju they had around the house (well, or models thereof) to destroy the COVID-19 virus. There’s something appealing about this idea, enlisting the very large to defeat the very small: like a reversal of War Of the Worlds. At any rate, Director Shunji Iwai took the core of this idea and built a feature film out of it, making first a series of videos for YouTube and then expanding them into a full feature film.

The 12 Day Tale of the Monster That Died In 8 (8日で死んだ怪獣の12日の物語, Yoka de Shinda Kaiju no Juninichi no Monogatari) follows an actor named Sato (Takumi Saitoh, who has been in many things including Haruko’s Paranormal Laboratory and Tokyo Vampire Hotel, here playing a version of himself) temporarily with no work due to the COVID shutdown of the Japanese film industry. To fill the time, he’s bought ‘capsule kaijus’ online, small monsters that hatch from a capsule and will grow; Sato plans to send their final forms to take on COVID (the idea of capsule kaiju, incidentally, is taken from a 60s TV show called Ultraseven). He gets advice about the creatures from a director he knows, Shinji Higuchi (one of the directors behind the Kaiju Defeats Covid project, also the co-director of Shin Godzilla, and the director of, among other things, the live-action Attack On Titan), and watches a YouTuber raising her own capsule kaiju. And he chats with other friends and co-workers. The entire film is in fact a series of video calls, occasionally interrupted by scenes of dancers, or a drone flying through a city, all of it in black and white. (Wikizilla.org claims that this is the first kaiju movie shot entirely in black-and-white since 1965.)

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Arthur C. Clarke: Omnibuses, Collections, and Remixes

Arthur C. Clarke: Omnibuses, Collections, and Remixes

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Omnibuses:
Across the Sea of Stars (Harcourt Brace World, 1959)
From the Ocean, From the Stars (Harcourt Brace World, 1961)
Prelude to Mars (Harcourt Brace World, 1965; book club edition shown)
The Lion of Comarre and Against the Fall of Night (Harcourt Brace World, 1968; book club edition shown)

Arthur C. Clarke was one of the major science fiction writers of the 1950s through the 1970s; his biggest claim to fame was as coauthor, along with filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, of the film and novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. He was a British scientist who lived most of his life in Ceylon, later known as Sri Lanka, and wrote numerous books about his skin diving adventures in that area. He began publishing short stories as early as 1937, and his novels beginning in the 1950s included Childhood’s End, The City and the Stars, and Rendezvous with Rama.

This is the first of two posts about Arthur C. Clarke’s short fiction, which comprise nearly 100 titles and include such famous works as “The Star” and “The Nine Billion Names of God,” not to mention “The Sentinel,” one of the  (several) inspirations for 2001. This post will trace the overlaps between Clarke’s early collections and the later “omnibuses” and “remixes.” The next post will review the stories, both in general terms and to highlight the 8 or 10 or 12 best, or most significant, Clarke stories, in my judgment.

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Fantasia 2021, Part XIX: Small Gauge Trauma 2021

Fantasia 2021, Part XIX: Small Gauge Trauma 2021

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The Small Gauge Trauma showcase is the Fantasia Film Festival’s annual collection of short genre films. Mostly these are horror movies, sometimes action; science fiction shorts get their own showcase. Small Gauge Trauma 2021 featured 10 movies from a total of 8 different countries.

It started with “Aria,” from the UK. It’s a 13-minute piece from writer-director Christopher Poole, which begins as a couple (Susannah Fielding and Daniel Lawrence Taylor) set up a new security system and digital assistant: Aria. Which soon begins to behave oddly, and surreal moments blur the line between waking and dream. It’s a solid enough story with some ominous touches and memorable images, though I didn’t think the ending really paid off the promise of the earlier oddity.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Arthur, King of the Britons

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Arthur, King of the Britons

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Monty Python and the Holy Grail (UK, 1975)

So, you think The Green Knight is a different cinematic take on the Arthurian legends? Well, okay, it is, but let’s go back to the early Seventies, the first time the Brits were really breaking the mold of Camelot and rolling out the Round Table.

Arthur of the Britons, Season One

Rating: ***
Origin: UK, 1972
Director: Sidney Hayers, et al.
Source: Network DVDs

Britain’s ITV network had several fine historical adventure shows early on, including The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1956) and Sir Francis Drake (1961), but it was a long decade until their next one, Arthur of the Britons, in 1972, and in that time a lot of things changed, including tastes in historical sagas. Hollywood’s Technicolor past was out, replaced by gritty realistic history, at least as it was seen fifty years before now. This series was set during the time of the historical Arthur — if he existed — a time shortly after the Romans left British shores and the Saxons came across the narrow sea to fill the power vacuum. Here, “King” Arthur is one of many Celtic warlords resisting the Saxon advances, but the only one with the vision to see that the Celts must unite under a single leader if they are to hold the parts of Britain still under their control.

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Introduction to DAW Books’ The Year’s Best Horror Stories (1972–1994), edited by Richard Davis, Gerald W. Page, and Karl Edward Wagner

Introduction to DAW Books’ The Year’s Best Horror Stories (1972–1994), edited by Richard Davis, Gerald W. Page, and Karl Edward Wagner

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20 of the 22 volumes of The Year’s Best Horror Stories (DAW Books)

Today I’m beginning a new series of posts investigating DAW Books’ Year’s Best Horror Stories series, which ran from 1971 to 1994. As a fan of literary horror, I’m excited to sequentially read through these volumes and share my thoughts with you. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to discover some great stories and authors, perhaps some we’ve never read before, and I’m also hoping that we will be able to see how trends in horror have changed over the years. Each post will investigate one volume at a time.

Except this first one, in which I want to explore the impetus and beginnings of the series as a whole.

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Fantasia 2021, Part XVIII: Hotel Poseidon

Fantasia 2021, Part XVIII: Hotel Poseidon

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“Choulequec” is a 26-minute short film from France, written and directed by Benoit Blanc and Matthias Girbig, and it’s quite charming in an absurd way. It follows a man, Lucas Lesol (Girbig), searching for Alma (Billie Blain), his missing 16-year-old daughter. On a rural highway he crosses the city limits of the town of Choulequec and finds himself in a bizarre place where an officious sheriff, Chépair (one of two roles for Benoit Blanc), has made up absurd laws. It starts out less like Kafka and more like Alice In Wonderland, possessed of the same left-field logic, and as it goes on becomes increasingly surreal. Fiction bends in on itself, and we’re never sure if we’re watching the characters or watching the characters watch the characters. It’s a story abut stories, and it’s done very well with some very sharp ideas. I’m not sure the end quite resolves anything (in terms of either plot or theme), but the journey along the way is amusing and clever; you can see it for yourself here.

Bundled with the short was Hotel Poseidon, from Belgium, written and directed by Stef Lernous. Lernous is the artistic director of Abattoir Fermé, a theater company founded in 1999. Originally noted for its underground guerilla-theatre style, in recent years the company’s taken cinematic approaches to its staged works (which included an adult adaptation of Alice In Wonderland for the book’s 150th anniversary in 2015). They’ve performed opera and created TV shows, so cinema is a logical progression. Lernous talked a bit about the process of making the film in a question-and-answer session available on Fantasia’s YouTube page; there was only one draft of the script, and he was able to use exactly the actors he wanted in the roles he created. The result is a surreal, grimy film that lurches from sequence to sequence, with intentional swerves in tone and plot. It’s an interesting approach; I don’t think it really works.

The story’s set in the eponymous hotel, a decaying wreck owned by Dave (Tom Vermeir), a passive middle-aged man. He wanders the massive place he inherited some time before, stumbling from one scenario into another. On the same day his friend Jacki plans to host a concert, his aunt dies (with financial consequences for Dave), and a woman (Anneke Sluiters) turns up who insists on taking a room at the hotel even though it’s closed for business. And frankly disgusting: the hotel’s beyond dirty or dingy, an underlit and grotesque near-ruin. We watch Dave stumble through the day, see him attend the concert, see him suffer various humiliations, see him abducted and penned up in a large glass pen that oddly resembles the garden of Eden.

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Exploring and Adventuring the Traveller Way: The Sky Raiders, Part 2

Exploring and Adventuring the Traveller Way: The Sky Raiders, Part 2

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The is the second of two articles covering FASA’s published adventures in the Sky Raiders trilogy for Traveller. You can read the first here.

The Keith brothers, so prominent in creating Traveller materials during early years of the game, did not end the story of the Sky Raiders with The Legends of the Sky Raiders, but continued it on The Trail of the Sky Raiders and The Fate of the Sky Raiders. While both sequels can be played independently without having run through the previous one or two, the motivating rationale and exploration of Mirayn in Legends turns into more straightforward exposition. I think a more satisfactory story begins with Legends.

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When the Goddess Wakes by Howard Andrew Jones

When the Goddess Wakes by Howard Andrew Jones

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When comes my numbered day, I will meet it smiling. For I’ll have kept this oath.

I shall use my arms to shield the weak.

I shall use my lips to speak the truth, and my eyes to seek it.

I shall use my hand to mete justice to high and to low, and I will weigh all things with heart and mind.

Where I walk the laws will follow, for I am the sword of my people and the shepherd of their lands.

When I fall, I will rise through my brothers and my sisters, for I am eternal.

Pledge of the Altenerai

 

And with When the Goddess Wakes, Howard Andrew Jones’s Ring-Sworn Trilogy comes to a rousing conclusion. Perhaps the series’ greatest asset is its completion. In one two-and-a-half-year span — complete with a plague — all three books have appeared and that’s it, there ain’t no more. I waited six years between installments of Glen Cook’s Black Company, and millions of people have been waiting ten years for the next volume of A Song of Ice and Fire (good luck with that). Jones got in and got out, producing three tightly-plotted and -paced novels. For that alone, as a reader I say, “Thank you!” But there’s more to it than that.

The first book, For the Killing of Kings (2019) introduces the Altenerai, a corps of superior warriors complete with magical talents. They are dedicated to protecting the five realms of the Dendressi from forces magical and mundane. Just as it is discovered that a kingdom-destabilizing conspiracy leads right to the Queen, the five realms are invaded by the Naor, a brutal barbarian horde. Less than a decade earlier the Naor were almost victorious. This time around, most of the greatest Altenerai are missing or dead, and it seems as though only a pair of young Altenerai and a few veterans are ready to stand against the Dendressi’s enemies. That book ends grimly, with death and destruction and what seems certain victory of both the Naor and the Queen.

Upon the Flight of the Queen (2019) {That’s two books in one year, folks! It can be done.} begins right where the previous book left off, with death and destruction continuing apace. The Naor march on the capital, Darassus, and the Queen’s plot to resurrect a long lost goddess in order to create a utopia is revealed. Each promises destruction for the Dendressi. Both are thwarted, but the Queen escapes with every intention of carrying out her plan.

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Fantasia 2021, Part XVII: Seobok

Fantasia 2021, Part XVII: Seobok

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I closed out the fifth day of Fantasia 2021 with another short-and-feature bundle. “Vulnerability” (“Seijakusei”) is a 26-minute piece from Japan, written and directed by Eiji Tanigawa. It was made as an episode of an anthology TV show for FOD, the streaming arm of the Fuji Television Network; “Nogizaka Cinemas -STORY of 46-” is a show featuring idol group Nogizaka46, with each episode starring a different member. “Vulnerability” is a mixture of detective story and near-future science-fiction that plays out a little like Blade Runner if the replicants weren’t really that advanced.

In the year 2027, the Messiah lifestyle support androids (all played by Shiori Kubo) are perfect duplicates of human beings, with the rudimentary personality of a digital assistant. Something odd’s going on with their owners, though, who are displaying strange outbursts of violence. Two cops try to find what’s happening, but will they prove vulnerable to the weird effect? It’s a well-told story, with very strong visuals, an intriguing theme about living with digital perfection, and a good structure that ends in a surprising place. It won Fantasia’s International Short Film competition, and you can see it for yourself here.

The feature that accompanied the short was Seobok (서복), a science-fiction story from Korea with action and espionage elements. It follows Min Ki-hun (Gong Yoo, Train to Busan), a Korean secret service agent now retired and afflicted with a fatal brain tumour. His former superior, who he neither trusts nor likes, calls on him for one last mission — which might save his life.

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