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Draculas – 6WH

2 Comments / 6 Weeks of Halloween / /

Bram Stoker created the character of Count Dracula in his 1897 novel Dracula, and perhaps owing to the novel’s swift entrance into the public domain (at least, in the USA), he has appeared in more films than any other character, fictional or otherwise, except for Sherlock Holmes (which, incidentally, includes stories with both characters.) There have been over 30 straight movie adaptations of the novel and countless ancillary appearances, not to mention inclusions in television, stage, and other literature. Just last year, we had two Dracula-adjacent flicks with major releases (more on one of them below), and we’re about to get another Nosferatu from Robert Eggers later this year (not to mention the rumored Sci-Fi Western version of Dracula from Chloé Zhao), so the character has proven quite resilient.

I actually kicked off the Six Weeks of Halloween a little early by listening to the Audible Edition Audiobook, which was fantastic (I want to say that I read this in my teen years, but honestly, a lot of this felt new, so maybe I never got too far back then), and have been going through a Dracula kick in movies as well. We’ll most likely see more of these in the inevitable 6WH Speed Round, but here are three new-to-me Dracula flicks:

Six Weeks of Halloween: Week 1.5 – Draculas

The Last Voyage of the Demeter – On paper, this movie seems like it should work like gangbusters. Based on a short (about 5 pages) but evocative and memorable excerpt from Stoker’s original novel about Dracula’s voyage from Carpathia to London where it’s implied that he murders the entire crew, it’s an interesting pressure-cooker of a premise that leaves plenty of room to fill in details (even if we sorta how it will end). The sea is dope! The cast is filled with solid character actors doing yeoman’s work. The director and crew are also known for their sturdy craftsmanship. Add this all together, and somehow, you get a bit of a slog.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter

Perhaps this is because we know where this is likely to end up, which robs some of the impact of the deaths, even the more gratuitous ones (there’s a child and dog onboard, but their fate is pretty much a foregone conclusion, despite some solid tension being developed in isolated sequences). It’s definitely a bit too long. Clocking in at nearly 2 hours, it really stagnates once you get underway, which is weird, because the characters are a little thin and underdeveloped too. The plans our heroes devise to combat the creature aren’t very clever and they’re obviously ineffective (and, well, they can’t be that successful, least the story diverge too far from the source). I guess the premise isn’t quite the slam dunk it might seem upon first glance. I’d be curious how well it would work if you cut out 20-30 minutes and then withheld the names of Dracula and maybe even the Demeter (to throw us nerds off the scent) until much later in the movie. It might make for a better film, but I’m guessing a studio would never go for that – the marketing kinda hinges on Dracula.

Speaking of whom, this is an interesting take on the classic fiend. Over the last 125 years of countless appearances in film, television, and more, Dracula has suffered from Flanderization, where a character’s initial complexity gets distilled and simplified to the point where they become almost a caricature of themselves. With Dracula, this has usually taken the form of overemphasis on his sex appeal and adding an element of gothic melodrama to his story. Often, the truly monstrous nature of the character is downplayed in favor of providing a sympathetic backstory or a romantic subtext. Take this to its logical conclusion and you wind up with the sparkly lovestruck vampires of Twilight or the horndogs of True Blood. The interesting thing about The Last Voyage of the Demeter is that it has also Flanderized Dracula, just in the opposite, more monstrous direction. It’s an approach I’d normally approve of, especially if his identity was withheld until later in the movie, but all we really see is a generic boogeyman who pops up to slaughter a crewman every few minutes. It’s still interesting and the creature design is well done, but it feels a bit off for Dracula (who has more personality and cunning than we see here)…

The other major criticism this movie has garnered is with the ending, a transparent attempt to set up a sequel in which our hero (who, spoiler alert, does manage to become the sole human survivor of the Demeter) vows to hunt down Dracula. I guess the implication is that he’ll hook up with Van Helsing and friends later down the pike, but since this character doesn’t appear in the novel, I like to think that his quest for revenge is completely fruitless and that the sequel would just be him constantly three steps behind Dracula and two steps behind Van Helsing until they all finally meet up and he sees that Drac is already dead. This movie also suffers a bit from the modern cinematographic obsession with overly dark photography. It’s far from the worst offender, and it’s clear that the director and cinematographer know what they’re doing because much of the movie looks great, but the calibration is just off on some sequences, which are far too murky and dark (particularly the opening and fog soaked ending). Ultimately, there’s lots to like about the movie, but nothing quite coheres the way it should. **

Dracula: Dead and Loving It – I suppose it was inevitable that the man who made Young Frankenstein would eventually take on the other major Universal monster, and thus we get this surprisingly bland take on Dracula. Mel Brooks is obviously a fan of those original Universal monster movies, and this is clearly patterned after Tod Browning’s 1931 adaptation of Dracula. Indeed, this movie plays mostly like a straight remake of that film, with some light jokes scattered around for good measure.

Dracula: Dead and Loving It

The problem is that the joke density is quite low, and much of what’s there doesn’t land very well. There are a few good bits though. There’s a running gag about Dracula’s shadow (a clear reference to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which had come out only a few years earlier) that’s pretty good, and I love the splatstick bit when Harker drives the stake into Lucy’s heart. Leslie Neilson plays the titular Dracula to decent enough effect, and I like the way Peter MacNicol hams it up as Renfield. Mel Brooks himself shows up as Van Helsing, and he’s pretty good onscreen, even if his work behind the camera isn’t particularly great. I wonder if this movie would look better if it were just shot in black and white? As it is, it feels visually uninspired and flat.

I don’t know, I chuckled a few times and it’s always nice to sprinkle some comedies in with all the horror during this sort of marathon, but it’s also lethargic and largely unsuccessful. I could see it striking a chord if you saw it at a certain age, and I bet if I had seen this back when it came out, I might have a pleasant nostalgia for it today. It’s hard not to like a Dracula movie staring Leslie Neilson directed by Mel Brooks, but they gave it their best shot, and it’s nowhere near Brooks’ best work. **

Dracula (1974) – Dan Curtis (of Dark Shadows fame) directed and Richard Matheson (of I Am Legend fame) wrote this relatively straightforward adaptation of Stoker’s novel. The most notable changes here are introducing the idea that Dracula is Vlad the Impaler (implied by the novel, but not explicitly stated) and adding a romantic subplot involving Dracula and a woman who resembles his deceased wife (in this case, Lucy Westenra). Both points would become a prominent part of Coppola’s Dracula in the 1990s, which expanded the ideas further. There are lots of other changes: Jonathan Harker is killed early on and comes back as a vampire thrall during the final showdown, and several major characters are excised altogether, including Renfield, John Seward, and Quincey Morris.

Jack Palance as Dracula

Jack Palance plays the Count here, to pretty good effect. He brings a certain stoic physicality to the role, but also shows some yearning towards his long lost love that injects a bittersweet note. He’s not quite as otherworldly or memorable as Bela Lugosi, but Palance brings a peculiar cadence that is fitting for the part. Unfortunately, the cast surrounding him isn’t quite up to the task. In particular, the Van Helsing is quite lacking, but the rest of the cast can’t quite hold the line either. Visually, Curtis does what he can, and it has some nice compositions, but that can’t really make up for the rest of it. This is definitely an interesting adaptation in that it introduces some ideas that would influence future takes on Drac, but it ultimately does come down somewhere in the middle of the pack of straight Dracula adaptations… **

Again, I will most definitely be watching more Dracula and Dracula-adjacent movies during the next six weeks, but they’ll probably have to wait for the traditional Speed Round. In the meantime, stay tuned for some Dario Argento, coming on Sunday…

Six Weeks of Halloween 2024: Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers

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In Robert Aickman’s short story “Ringing the Changes,” a surreal crowd of townfolk parade through the streets chanting:

The living and the dead dance together.
Now’s the time. Now’s the place. Now’s the weather.

When I read it a few years ago, I found it to be a fittingly macabre slogan for The Six Weeks of Halloween as a concept. As we approach Autumn, there’s a chill in the air, leaves are changing color and falling from their trees, people start breaking out their sweaters and adorning their household with all manner of mutilated gourds, decorative corpses, plastic spiders, styrofoam gravestones with cute, ironic captions, and of course, the (pumpkin) spice must flow. These and other ostensibly ghastly traditions can mean only one thing: It’s Halloween Season!

Around these parts, we celebrate that Hallowed E’en by watching a veritable plethora of horror movies (and we read some spooky books while we’re at it) for the six weeks leading up to the big day. Why six weeks? Well, it used to be two weeks better than the standard October marathons that a lot of folks do, but everyone’s been stepping up their game over the last few years, to the point where we’re just conventional at this point.

It’s traditional to start the marathon off with something that’s at least nominally respectable. Which is not to say that it won’t be schlocky fun, just that there will be some element to the theme that might hint towards something a little more classy than typical. Things like silent movies, foreign films (more foreign films), arthouse flicks, classic anthologies, celebrated studios (and other celebrated studios), and the like. This year, with the help of the fine folks over at The Criterion Collection (always a safe option for more respectable horror), we’ve lined up a trio of Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers.

Browning is most famous for directing the first sound film adaptation of Dracula (a Universal monster movie classic that we’ve revisited multiple times during these Six Weeks of Halloween marathons), but his notorious followup to that film was Freaks, an infamously transgressive film that we’ll talk a little more about below. Freaks also touches on topics and themes that Browning often tackled: outsiders, con artists, grifters, carnivals, sideshows, gypsies, vagabonds, and the like. All three films we’re watching this week are from that milieu, though only one is a sound film. Browning himself spent time working at a circus (as a clown) before moving on to Vaudeville and eventually Hollywood (he was a protégée of D.W. Griffith), so the man has the experience to back up his interests. Let’s dive in:

Week 1: Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers

Freaks – An infamously transgressive film, surely one of the strangest things ever produced by a major American studio, this film was initially a financial and critical disaster, but developed a cult following and eventual reevaluation decades later.

A beautiful but cruel trapeze artist seeks to marry a sideshow performer, but when it becomes clear that she’s been poisoning him in order to inherit his fortune, the rest of the sideshow “freaks” rise up in righteous vengeance.

Freaks

Browning famously cast real-life sideshow performers to portray the performers at the circus, which certainly lends an authenticity and verisimilitude to the proceedings. There’s always been criticism of the film’s potential to exploit its cast’s physical disabilities for amusement’s sake, but the story does everything in its power to portray an inclusive community who, shunned by mainstream society, have their own code of acceptance and inclusion. It’s telling that Browning doesn’t really show the performers onstage (i.e. for an audience’s amusement), but instead demonstrates their talents in a more understated and organic manner (i.e. a quadruple amputee lights his own cigarette using only his mouth during a conversation, and so on).

Indeed, for a film made in 1932 (a time when eugenics was nearing its peak in popularity), the film must have been shocking in its portrayal of circus freaks as actual people with real feelings, hopes, and dreams. The whole point of the film is that the more conventional people, like the trapeze artist and strongman who look down on the sideshow performers as subhuman freaks and seek to take advantage of them, are the real monsters here.

Audiences at the time didn’t really see it that way, and were revolted at the film. Early screenings were significantly longer and reportedly more gruesome than the cut that was eventually released and survives today (nearly 30 minutes of footage was cut and is thought to be lost), but the ending remains effective, perhaps even moreso because of what you do not see. To be sure, it’s not a perfect film. The narrative is simplistic and while the cast and setting are quite authentic, the performances are a bit stilted. But these flaws tend to be more endearing than anything else, and it remains an effective bit of social commentary and, remarkably odd, even today, for a major studio release. The Criterion presentation is the best the film has ever looked, and has lots of special features as well. ***1/2

The Unknown – A circus bound love triangle develops between an armless knife thrower (he uses his feet) and a strongman vying for the affections of their female assistant. One of the men is actually an infamous criminal who is hiding out in disguise, and seeks to sabotage the the other’s attempts at love. Ironic twists and machinations culminate in a tragic showdown.

The Unknown

Browning often collaborated with “the man of a thousand faces,” Lon Cheney (most famous for his turn in the silent Phantom of the Opera), and this is the most famous and celebrated of their work together. It’s easy to see why, with Cheney giving a remarkable physical performance. Even accounting for the usage of a body double for some of the footwork (Cheney plays the armless knife thrower who is remarkably dexterous with his feet and toes), it’s quite effective and really sells the character’s shocking decision later in the film. I won’t spoil the bitterly ironic, O. Henry-esque twists at the core of the story, even if you might see where it’s headed (though I must admit, I wasn’t really expecting the film to get quite so strange and lurid). Cheney doesn’t do crazy makeup or anything here, but he sells all the turmoil his character is going through with his exaggerated facial expressions, grimaces, scowls, and whatnot, sometimes managing to evoke resignation, heartbreak, and even sympathy for a fundamentally callous character.

Also of note is an early performance from a young Joan Crawford as the love interest and the rest of the supporting cast also does fine work. The plot focuses a bit more heavily on the melodrama than I usually like, and it all feels like a bit of a dry (silent) run for Freaks, but it’s worthwhile on its own as well. If you’re interested in film history, it’s neat to see how Browning evolved these settings and themes across the three movies in this set.

The Unknown

Visually, I’ve never found Browning to be quite as dynamic as the expressionistic films of the era, even though there is a clear influence at work here. Take the scene where Cheney confronts a doctor in a cathedral-like surgical suite, which is certainly a striking visual, even if it’s not as extreme as something like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (a clear influence on most horror films of the 1920s). That being said, I’ve always found Browning to have a keen eye for framing and blocking that is too often dismissed in favor of more showy techniques.

The Criterion presentation is sourced from the only two remaining nitrate prints of the film, so it actually looks the worst of the three films in this set, even if it’s probably as good as possible (to be clear, any issues here are with the poorly preserved film and not with Criterion and their digital partners) and better than most public domain silent films that you’re likely to find for free on the streaming services (and hey, I’ll certainly take that over AI upscaled slop or, like, you know, nothing – Browning’s London After Midnight was made in the same year as The Unknown, but is one of the most famous lost films of all time and I’d totally take a crappy transfer over nothing). Criterion also sourced a new piano-heavy score which pretty much conforms to what you’d expect from a silent film, but is well done, and an audio commentary that’s solid and informative. Overall, I don’t see how this could look or sound any better unless someone finds a well preserved and pristine print somewhere (which has happened!) ***

The Mystic – After decades of only being available on VHS, this is the least seen and rarest of the three movies in this set. Sourced from a 35 mm safety print (the intricacies of old timey film stock are perhaps worthy of their own post and, uh, some learning on my part, as I’m certainly no expert on this sort of thing except to say that this transfer looks pretty good for a film made in 1925) with a new score by Dean Hurley (best known for his frequent collaborations with David Lynch), it looks and sounds pretty great.

Small time Hungarian gypsy hustlers with an effective psychic act are approached by an American grifter who lures them to New York to swindle rich high-society types. Another love triangle develops here, as well as some grinchlike transformations, but the real stars of the show are the elaborate séance set-pieces. Browning takes you behind the con to see just how these things work, but the actual presentation is quite effective, even when you know how it’s being pulled off.

The Mystic

Browning was not able to get Lon Chaney for this film, and perhaps the cast of mostly unknowns is part of why the film has languished in obscurity for so long. That being said, Eileen Pringle does great work as the titular Mystic, aided by some rather spectacular costumes by famed art deco designer Romain de Tirtoff (also known as Erté). Browning and cinematographer Ira H. Morgan light her in a way that literally makes her glow on screen at times, and her performance can stand up to the scrutiny.

As mentioned above, this is a silent film with a new score by Dean Hurley, who does include sound effects in the mix (i.e. knocking on a door, the sweeping sound of a broom, cheers or laughs of a crowd, horse hooves, and so on). I’m not a silent film expert, but this is an approach I have not seen often, and it made for interesting watching (even if it was sometimes odd to hear the sound effects but not dialogue). Clocking in at a svelte 74 minutes, it’s actually the longest of the three movies here, even if it is shorter than most House of the Dragon episodes.

Once again, it does feel like we’re looking at the larval stages of what would eventually become The Unknown and then Freaks, but that’s what makes this set interesting. ***

A successful start for the 2024 Six Weeks of Halloween marathon, stay tuned for more: we’ve got some Dracula movies, a trio of Dario Argento flicks, some Larry Fessenden, a few Neo-Slashers, Flyquels, and much, much moar!

Link Dump

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Just a routine clearing of the baffles before we get into Six Weeks of Halloween mode; the usual dump of interesting links from ye olde internets:

  • Mushroom learns to crawl after being given robot body – Neat! Of course, the mushroom didn’t actually learn anything and the people who wrote this article (or any of the other similar articles) should be ashamed of their clickbait lies. Scientists figured out how to read chemical and electrical energy from the mushroom and programmed a robot to move when it detected that energy. Still pretty neat, but this isn’t The Last of Us yet.
  • Should the Miami Dolphins kill 5 of their players to trigger a disaster draft to improve their roster? Very nice and normal conversation over at Reddit, but I do think it’s funny when people tease out unintended consequences from a given ruleset. Like, obviously if the Miami Dolphins as an organization murdered 5 players, they wouldn’t get away with it. But if a “crazed fan” did it?
  • Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art – Typically thoughtful essay from Ted Chiang that puts generative AI in perspective. It’s got some good zingers (“… the appeal of generative-A.I. programs: they let you engage in something like plagiarism, but there’s no guilt associated with it because it’s not clear even to you that you’re copying.”), but also articulates a good case for why we should value the human element of artistic expression. Along the way, Chiang also mounts a defense of writing that is “entertaining” (as opposed to “high art”), and the underpinnings of intelligence and skill, and why we engage with writing in the first place. I’ve been thinking about this sort of stuff of late and, someday, might put something up here discussing the ins and outs of a world changed by AI…
  • I Am Eating Everything on Denny’s ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ Menu – Yet another in Matt Singer’s quest to sacrifice his health at the alter of promotional food menus (this time with special guest!)
  • The Blue Zone Distraction – Every now and again, you see a story about how the world’s oldest aged individuals tend to exist in certain geographical regions and cultures. The message is usually about diet or activity or stress, but it turns out that almost all of these geographical regions tend to have older aged populations because of poor record keeping (i.e. inadequate birth/death certificates), fraud (relatives collecting pensions for someone who’s been dead for years/decades), and other such conflations.
  • Famous Folks – The realities of famous folks’ lives sound really quite awful. People seem to feel very entitled to them in a way that is deeply disturbing.
  • Deborah Ann Woll Teaches Jon Bernthal Dungeons and Dragons – Remarkable on-the-fly introduction to D&D, she’s clearly an experienced DM and knows her stuff, and it’s funny seeing Bernthal’s eyes light up once he realizes what’s happening…
  • Making a Sandwich From Scratch Took This Man Six Months – Making a sandwich from scratch, like, truly from scratch, as in growing the wheat for the bread, raising the chicken, etc… cost $1500 and took 140 hours of labor over six months.
  • James Cameron Responds to Fans Complaining About 4K Transfers – “When people start reviewing your grain structure, they need to move out of mom’s basement and meet somebody. Right? I’m serious. I mean, are you fucking kidding me?” Sorry James, some of it looks bad (j/k, I thought they were mostly decent, even if I prefer *ahem* grain structure and whatnot). I’m still gonna snag the new Terminator 4K. Fingers crossed that they fixed the sound.
  • What happened when I made my sons and their friends go without smartphones – Seems like it was actually pretty beneficial, and only hard for the first few days.

That’s all for now, stay tuned – Halloween season is almost upon us!

Salty Sea-Dog Book Review: Horatio Hornblower

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I’ve read enough novels influenced by this series, particularly ones billed as “Horatio Hornblower in Spaaaace”, that I figured I should at least give the first book a shot. Beat to Quarters (aka The Happy Return – a rare instance of the original British title being worse than the American one) was C.S. Forester’s introduction to the character and the first novel published, but as he fleshed out the series, he delved backwards into Hornblower’s history as well, such that this is actually the sixth novel in terms of the series internal chronology.

Book cover for The Happy Return aka Beat to Quarters

The novel opens with Captain Hornblower being ordered by British Admiralty to South America in order to form an alliance with rebels (led by a madman who fancies himself as a god) against the Spanish colonial government. Along the way, he encounters a larger Spanish warship, is obliged to take on Lady Barbara Wellesley (the sister of the Duke of Wellington) as a distracting passenger, and must deal with the shifting allegiances of the Spanish government.

Forester was clearly an influence on other writers operating in a similar milieu. When it comes to my little Salty Sea-Dog project, Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series was clearly seen as an heir to Forester’s Hornblower series, has many similarities, and as such, makes for a good point of comparison. Which is to say, Forester’s approach is significantly better than O’Brian’s.

Superficially, these books are quite similar. British naval tales set during the Napoleonic Wars with elements of restrained British romance sprinkled throughout, I must say that Forester’s take on this demonstrates a much better sense of storytelling and page turning ability. O’Brian’s books are quite episodic in nature, and Forester also has a bit of this, but does so in a much more fluid manner, with one episode leading to the next, building in tension and scope as we go along, eventually reaching a suitable climax. O’Brian’s tales felt perfunctory and anticlimactic to me, while Forester provides a better sense of pacing and escalation of stakes.

Forester clearly knows his seafaring stuff, but does not feel obligated to overburden the story with jargon in the way that O’Brian tends to do. His prose is direct and clear, and while the whole affair retains a typically British stiff upper lip, the characters are relatable and their travails lively. Despite what I’ve always thought of as a silly name, Horatio Hornblower himself is a bit gruff in this first entry in the series, but he softens a bit as you get into his head and see why he makes the decisions that he does (even as he’s filled with self-doubt, something I typically don’t love in a story like this, he’s ultimately quite competent and decisive). He’s certainly faced with a series of difficult dilemmas throughout, and there is one big sequence of naval warfare that is extremely well executed (again, Forester balances the technical aspects of the battle with a page-turning, character-based approach that flows more readily than O’Brian’s jargon-heavy exposition).

I’m definitely interested in continuing the series, always a good sign, and indeed, I might even revisit some of the aforementioned SF renditions of this sort of thing. I’ve already read all the Vorkosigan books, but I might have to check out more of the Honor Harrington series (or watch some Star Trek or pick up another book series, there are a lot of options…) There’s also a decently regarded 1951 film adaptation of this first novel, under the title Captain Horatio Hornblower, starring Gregory Peck and directed by the fittingly eyepatched Raoul Walsh that I shall have to check out at some point (apparently there was a TV series as well, but that does not appear to be widely available).

So ends my Salty Sea-Dog Era of reading, though it will live on as I make my way through more of the Horatio Hornblower books (I already have the next one sitting on the shelf, so this is not an idle threat). Altogether a worthy exercise, and it’s funny, I just picked up a collection of Edgar Allen Poe stories to kick off my Six Weeks of Halloween reading and the first story is, fittingly, a salty sea-dog story. So perhaps there are more salty sea-dogs in my future than I originally thought.

Salty Sea-Dog Book Review: Moby-Dick

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A few months ago, I embarked upon my Salty Sea-Dog Era of reading, have been reviewing the progress thus far, and so we come to Moby-Dick. Herman Melville’s sublime, layered exploration of obsession and vengeance may be the most famous American novel ever written, and as such, the prospect of reviewing something people have themselves been obsessing about for well over a century is somewhat daunting. In an early review, London publication Morning Advertiser‘s anonymous reviewer opined: “To convey an adequate idea of a book of such various merits… is impossible in the scope of a review.” There is little to be said about Moby-Dick that has not already been explored ad nauseum, but I spent a couple months reading the damn thing, so I should probably record some thoughts, if only for posterity.

Moby-Dick, illustration by Rockwell Kent from the 1930 edition

I used the words obsession and vengeance above as a shorthand for the themes of Moby-Dick, and indeed, they are quite prominently featured in the text, but the thing about Moby-Dick is that it’s notoriously difficult to pin down. Like the sea that Melville aptly describes throughout the novel, there are numerous thematic undercurrents and tidal forces at work underneath the surface levels of the novel.

The Pequod from Moby-Dick, illustration by Rockwell Kent from the 1930 edition

Take obsession, one of the more obvious and famous themes of the book, usually attributed to captain Ahab’s mad quest for revenge on the white whale that took his leg on a previous voyage. It’s certainly presented early on, but quickly takes a back seat to another form of obsession; that of Melville’s interest in whales and whaling. We’re frequently presented with an almost non-fictional survey of knowledge about whales, ranging from an analysis of historical artwork used to depict whales, to a catalog of mythological references to whales (including from Greek, Roman, Hebrew, and Hindu literature, with obvious focus on the story of Jonah), to various culinary considerations (including this bit of irony in Chapter 65: “Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is adding insult to injury, is it?”), to biological taxonomies of whales, to countless other digressions on the art of whale hunting. Only a man in the grip of obsession could compile and write such a thing.

Moby-Dick, illustration by Rockwell Kent from the 1930 edition

So it goes with other various themes. Ahab’s fruitless thirst for vengeance is infamous, but while it is brought up early on, it only becomes truly prominent during the final sequence of the novel. Melville, though, is clearly concerned with epistemology and perception; with the difficulty of observation and knowledge. This is demonstrated through his aforementioned digressions on non-fictional topics, many of which may seem a bit quaint to modern audiences. We’ve grown up with exquisite underwater photography of all manner of sea life, not just whales and sharks, so it’s easy to underestimate how difficult it was to piece this sort of thing together in 1851, when Melville was talking about old paintings as the primary source of what a whale looks like. Also interesting are Melville’s love of seafaring, defense of whaling, and justifications of its excess. Whole chapters are devoted to such, and surely caused an escalation in the hot take industrial complex of its day. I could spend years cataloguing the themes of Moby-Dick, probing and teasing out theories on religion, race, philosophy, and the like (this sort of inspired study in its readers being, in itself, yet another layer of the theme of obsession).

As you might gather from the above, this is not exactly an easy-going read. The overarching story itself is quite simple, but the language and style are complex and frustratingly beautiful at times. There’s an almost poetic, dreamlike quality to the whole affair that is difficult to pin down, and can lend itself to an trance-like reading state. You read a page or two, realize that you have no idea what’s going on, but then when you go back and reread the page, you find that you’ve absorbed it in some ways, but not in others. It’s a very odd and challenging read in that way, and I must admit that I’m sure some of this went over my head.

Moby-Dick, illustration by Rockwell Kent from the 1930 edition

Another stray thought about the numerous digressions in this book: I don’t want to hear anyone complain about Science Fiction’s propensity towards info-dumps ever again. Sure, most SF writers don’t have the facility with language and stylistic prose that Melville does, but if this book can spend hundreds of pages going off on non-fictional tangents and yet still be one of the canonical candidates for Great American Novel, so can Science Fiction. If Nostromo represents literary fiction’s propensity towards worldbuilding (a la high-fantasy epics like Lord of the Rings), then Moby-Dick represents literary fiction’s propensity towards info-dumps and tangents (a la science fiction epics like Dune or Neal Stephenson’s entire bibliography).

One final note on editions. As a book in the public domain, Moby-Dick is available in numerous different editions, including plenty of free digital copies. I looked around and settled on the Third Norton Critical Edition, mostly because it contains a huge amount of supplementary material. And the material is great! Like Melville’s obsessive study of all things whaling, people have been hunting down supplementary materials like Melville’s correspondence, biographical material, and even old reviews from nearly forgotten publications. New material is still being discovered to this day (or, at least, until 2018, when this edition was published), and while my “obsession” with has not reached the fervor with which those who compiled this information have, I did sample some of it, and it’s quite interesting. That being said, this book is almost certainly not the greatest. In particular, the paper it’s printed on is way too thin, making it difficult to handle and more importantly, some of the ink bleeds through to the other side, making it difficult to read. As already mentioned, there are countless other editions that are invariably cheaper than this one, so if you are going to read Moby-Dick, I suggest maybe seeking them out. If you become obsessed and want an exhaustive resource of supplementary material, then maybe jump on that Norton edition.

Salty Sea-Dog Book Review: Treasure Island & Moar

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A few months ago, I embarked upon my Salty Sea-Dog Era of reading and now we review progress. I’ve already covered Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo at a level of detail that I probably won’t reach in this post, but I will be covering several books, so there is that. Let’s get to it:

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson – There are books that are archetypal to certain genres or sub-genres. Books with outsized influence on all that come after it. They may not be the first to cover a certain topic, but they are always in the conversation whenever someone tackles the subject. Such is the case for Treasure Island and Pirate adventure stories.

Illustration from Treasure Island

All the tropes we know and love are here: treasure maps where X marks the spot, peg legs, eye patches, and parrots on shoulders as standard pirate accessories, the “black spot” as a death sentence that pirates hand out to traitors, copious amounts of rum, mutiny, lovable rogues, euphemisms for pirating (namely “gentlemen of fortune”), shipwrecks, marooned survivors, and oodles of nautical slang (“Shiver my timbers!”). Heck, even the title “Treasure Island” is a trope.

The novel is shorter and more accessible than I thought it would be, a sorta 19th century YA novel complete with plucky teen protagonist Jim Hawkins who undergoes a bit of a coming of age through the whole ordeal. And it is quite an ordeal, most of the crew dying once the treachery begins, and Hawkins finds himself in real danger often. Stevenson’s prose is mostly straightforward, occasionally veering into a sort of baroque patois for the pirates, but there are plenty of classic lines that originate right here and it all comes together in a thrilling way. It’s hard to hear Long John Silver intoning “Them that die’ll be the lucky ones.” before battle and not get worked up, is what I mean. It’s a book I probably should have read 30 years ago, but it still plays pretty well even now.

Master and Commander and Post Captain by Patrick O’Brian – The first two entries of the 20-novel Aubrey-Maturin series, set mostly in the era of the Napoleonic Wars. The series centers on the (sometimes contentious) friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and his ship’s surgeon Stephen Maturin, a physician, natural philosopher, and intelligence agent.

I can see why the series has gained such popularity, but I must admit to being a bit underwhelmed by a few factors that just rarely play well for me. For instance, the novels are largely episodic in nature (and I mean this within each novel – obviously a 20 book series is episodic by its very nature), meaning that the overarching story is haltingly progressed in an oddly paced way. There’s plenty of connective tissue, to be sure, but this sort of approach rarely works for me.

O’Brian’s prose is a little more imposing here than I usually care for as well. He’s obviously well versed in nautical concepts and terminology and the character of Maturin, unfamiliar with the high seas, presents a sort of audience surrogate that allows explanations for ideas we might not be familiar with. More surprising is the influence of Jane Austen on O’Brian’s writing (particularly in Post Captain). I was not expecting Austen-style social commentary, irony, and even romance in these novels, but it’s all there.

Again, the episodic nature of the stories does tend to harm the pacing, and there are several episodes that tend to undercut the overarching sense of storytelling that I usually look for in these types of books. I don’t need protagonists to be superheroes, but ending the first book with Captain Aubrey’s ship being captured by the French and subsequently released to face court martial is… not quite the rousing ending I was hoping for. I suppose I should note that I listened to these in audio-book form (I read the other books in this post in dead tree format) and that the narrator was, in some ways, excellent, but I also found myself spacing out from time to time. Obviously, these are all “me” problems, as the series has quite a following and I suspect later installments would improve upon these first two, but I must admit, I’m not particularly inclined to continue the series myself.

Stay tuned, Moby Dick and Beat to Quarters (the first Horatio Hornblower novel) are next up…

Link Dump

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The usual collection of links from the depths of ye olde internets, dumped here for your enjoyment:

During the last hour of “Horizon,” a man sitting several rows behind me descended the steps in the dark theater, spilled his half-full bucket of popcorn midway down, reached to pick it up — but was interrupted when he let out an audible fart. At this point, he abandoned the bucket and hustled to the door. If only “Horizon” matched that level of compact storytelling and wit, featuring a memorable character facing challenging odds.

  • Can a TV show save your sanity? – What starts as an overview of a ridiculous Bigfoot-hunting “reality” show turns into a pretty good encapsulation of why escapism is valuable, particularly in the environment of continual outrage stoked over the past decade or so.
  • Disappearing Polymorph – There are crystal structures that won’t form anymore, even though they existed just fine in the recent past. This phenomenon is of particular concern to the pharmaceutical industry, which has “lost” drugs to polymorphism.
  • Calculus Made Easy – A textbook written in 1910 that should be required reading for students today, as they’d get the point much quicker than today’s textbooks…
  • Diagnosis made by hallucinatory voices (in particular, the “difficult case” on page 17) – Woman hears voices in her head saying things to the effect of “Don’t be afraid, we’re here to help.” Doctors put her on anti-psychotic meds and they work for a bit, but the voices come back and tell her to seek immediate treatment, giving her a specific address and telling her to get a brain scan. It turns out to be a hospital, and just to reassure her, the doctors order a brain scan. They identify a brain tumor and eventually remove the tumor. After the surgery, the voices say “We are pleased to have helped you. Goodbye.” She never hears the voices again. Several mundane explanations are proposed, but no one knows for sure what actually happened.
  • Reliable Sources: How Wikipedia Admin David Gerard Launders His Grudges Into the Public Record – It’s interesting how much influence you can gain in internet institutions simply by showing up… granted, you have to do so consistently for, like, decades, but still. Anyway, Wikipedia remains pretty useful as a starting place, even if this guy seems a bit goofy (and his influence is limited to certain specific areas).
  • Captain Tony Soprano – Perfect
  • Dave’s Pickle Warehouse – Yes
  • I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again – This data scientist has absolutely had it with all the AI talk of late.

That’s all for now…

Mr. Jim McAllister’s Politically Significant, Ethically Questionable, Anti-History – Repeating-Iitself Spring Term Movie Quiz

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After a (not quite) four year hiatus, Dennis Cozzalio of the Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule blog has posted another trademark movie quiz, which are always a lot of fun to answer. Previous installments answering questions from Professor Hubert Farnsworth, David Huxley, Professor Fate, Professor Russell Johnson, Dr. Smith, Professor Peabody, Professor Severus Snape, Professor Ed Avery, Dr. Anton Phibes, Sister Clodagh, Professor Arthur Chipping, Miss Jean Brodie, Professor Larry Gopnick, Professor Dewey Finn, Ms. Elizabeth Halsey, Professor Abraham Setrakian, Mr. Dadier, Professor Abronsius, Professor Moriarty, Professor Birdman, Dr. Jonathan Hemlock, Dean Vernon Wormer, and Dr. Henryk Savaard are also available.

The Movie Quiz

1) Movie that best reflects, describes or embodies the tenor of our times

For perhaps obvious reasons, my brain immediately jumped to the paranoid 70s thriller for this (and perhaps its forbearers in the 1960s). There are many options among that coterie, but in looking through them, my response mutated a bit and turned into Taxi Driver. I actually have not seen it in a while, but if my records are correct, the 4K should be arriving on my doorstep in just a couple of days (long live physical media!)

Taxi Driver

In any case, the character of Travis Bickle seems as relevant as ever. Lonely, overwhelmed by modernity, confused, but desperately wanting to do something important with his life, make a difference, even if it’s just to save one young woman. He cycles through apathy, abortive romance, political engagement, and finally tragic heroism (at least, in his head).

2) Favorite Don Siegel movie not starring Clint Eastwood

It’s the obvious choice, but it’s clearly Invasion of the Body Snatchers for me. Charley Varrick is a solid runner-up, and of course I do love his Eastwood collaborations as well.

3) Your favorite movie theater, now or then

A tough question because, as much as I love the movie theater experience, I never really had a go-to theater that wasn’t part of a massive chain like AMC or Regal. At any given time, my favorite theaters were probably the newest theater in my area because they were generally cleaner and nicer than what was around before. Innovations like stadium seating and eventually recliners also helped. In the early/mid 90s it was probably AMC Marple, Granite Run, or Painters Crossing. This is where my more formative movie experiences happened and I have fond nostalgic memories of those theaters, even if they didn’t have the aforementioned innovations. More recently, the better theaters around me tend to be Regal Cinemas (and I have a Regal Unlimited subscription, which is nice) and there is the King of Prussia IMAX theater (one of the few full-size IMAX theaters in the country), but I would be incredibly grateful if an Alamo Drafthouse would open up here. Simple things like proper projection, masking, and the focus on proper crowd etiquette (i.e. no disruptive behavior like cell phone usage, etc…) are great, not to mention that the food and beer selections are actually good (unlike the local dine-in options, which are much worse). Alas, I’ve only been to those Alamo theaters in Austin a few times, and now that they got bought out, who knows how much of this will hold up over time…

4) You’re booking this Friday and Saturday night at that theater—What are the double features for each night?

This is an impossible choice, but at least two nights allows for two different strategies. Strategy the first: favorite movies I’ve never seen on the big screen: The Godfather and The Terminator. Strategy the second: two thematically similar movies. This one is even more impossible, but here’s what I’m going with: Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. I’ve actually never seen Fail Safe before, but I’ve been on a Lumet kick of late, and I figure at least one of the four movies should be something I’ve never seen before…

5) Wendy Hiller or Deborah Kerr?

I don’t have strong feelings for either, but for now it would be Wendy Hiller, as I’ve seen significantly more movies with her in it. That being said, when I go through my inevitable Powell/Pressburger phase, Kerr might take the cake.

6) Last movie seen in a theater/on physical media/by streaming

In a theater: Bad Boys: Ride or Die (not a huge fan of the series, but always appreciate the chemistry between Smith/Lawrence and there’s some solid action beats). On streaming: The Anderson Tapes (speaking of Lumet, and this is one of his Sean Connery collaborations, a snappy caper that prefigures those paranoid 70s thrillers I mentioned earlier). On physical media: The Crow 4K (looks better than ever, and the movie mostly holds up.)

7) Name a young actor in modern films who, either physically or by personality, reminds you of an actor from the age of classic movies

Not sure if this qualifies as “the age of classic movies” but Andrew Garfield could do a pretty good Anthony Perkins impersonation, no?

8) Favorite film of 2014

The Grand Budapest Hotel was my number one back in 2014 and I don’t really see any reason to override that with anything else (my overall Top 10 seems to be holding up reasonably well)

9) Second-favorite Louis Malle film

And so we come to the first embarrassing mulligan of the quiz, as I’ve only seen one Louis Malle film.

10) The Ladykillers (2004 Coen Bros. version)—yes or no?

I never know how to interpret the “yes or no” questions on these quizzes so I usually end up answering yes, but the Coen version of The Ladykillers is one of the more confounding movies I’ve seen. On paper, it should be near perfect, but in practice it’s just flat and dull. I love the Coens, I love Tom Hanks, and indeed, the whole cast is great. I don’t understand how this went off the rails so badly, but then, I’ve also never seen the original, so it’s hard to pinpoint anything. Anyway, it’s one of my least favorite Coen brothers movies, but I don’t, like, object to its existence or anything. So I’m answering “yes” anyway, because I don’t think I’ll ever answer “no” to one of these questions.

11) Andy Robinson (Scorpio) or Richard Widmark (Tommy Udo)?

Andy Robinson’s Scorpio takes this one for me, as he’s much more of a formative psycho in my movie watching career than Widmark’s Udo (in a movie I only caught up with recently – can totally recognize the Joker smile/laugh influence and importance there, but Scorpio will always creep me the hell out).

12) Best horror movie from the past ten years

The choices are plentiful and difficult to narrow down: The Witch, The Wolf of Snow Hollow, Green Room, Get Out, Us, The Endless, One Cut of the Dead, the list goes on, but If I had to narrow down to one, let’s just go with The Witch.

13) Upcoming movie release you have the highest hopes for in 2024

Nosferatu was the first thing that jumped out at me. There are several other things coming that I really want to be good, but am skeptical, notably Coppola’s Megalopolis and Kevin Costner’s Horizon movies. I’m always skeptical of sequels/reboots, but I’m curious about Gladiator 2 and a few other things. But Nosferatu seems like the thing I’m most excited for in 2024…

14) Movie you’re looking forward to this year that would surprise people or make them consider that you might have finally cracked up.

I’m having a difficult time with this one, and the only thing I can come up with is Venom: The Last Dance. It’s a sequel, which I usually don’t look forward to, and it’s not like I loved the first two movies… but I do kinda enjoy seeing Tom Hardy bicker with Venom. There’s some weird alchemy going on there that makes these movies worthwhile, even when they’re bad.

15) Favorite AIP one-sheet

I’m no expert, but I took a quick spin through the AIP catalog and picked out some posters that stood out:

Scream and Scream Again
Atragon
The Hand
Jailbreakers

I actually haven’t seen any of these movies, but maybe I should do a “judge movies by their cover” thing and seek them out.

16) Catherine Spaak or Daniela Giordano?

I’ve actually seen Daniela Giordano in several things (including the best titled Giallo ever, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key), but I must admit that I did not immediately recognize the name (she’s perhaps overshadowed by Edwige Fenech in two of them). Still, I have not seen Catherine Spaak in anything, though I am tentatively planning for a Dario Argento week in this year’s upcoming Six Weeks of Halloween marathon, which will include The Cat o’ Nine Tails…

17)  Favorite film of 1994

A great year for film with way too many choices to narrow down to just one, but immediate, gut reaction includes: Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, and To Live.

18) Second-favorite Wim Wenders film

Now we come to my second mulligan, as I’ve only seen one Wim Wenders film (Wings of Desire).

19) Best performance by an athlete in a non-sports-oriented movie

With apologies to Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, Terry Crews, Vinnie Jones, and the like, the clear answer is Kurt Thomas in Gymkata. Duh.

20) The cinema’s Best Appearance by A Piece of Fruit

The first thing that comes to mind is Denethor just wrecking those cherry tomatoes in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Part of the reason I like this answer is that I also want to argue about tomatoes being fruit. Some people and even the US government like to say they’re vegetables, but they’re clearly fruit! (Yes there’s a whole backstory involving government bureaucracy and taxes and whatnot, but it still doesn’t make tomatoes not fruit.)

21) Favorite film of 1974

As per usual, difficult to narrow down, but first thought was The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. There are certainly other, more popular choices (The Godfather Part II, Chinatown, The Conversation, etc…), but the others I was gravitating towards included Black Christmas, Blazing Saddles, and Gone in 60 Seconds (oh, and how could I forget: Killdozer.)

22) Most would probably agree we are not currently living in a golden age of film criticism. Given that, who, among currently active writers, do you think best carries the torch for the form?

It’s funny, I don’t find myself checking traditional reviews nearly as often as I used to… I tend to listen to podcasts and check Letterboxd. Of course, a large proportion of folks I follow on Letterboxd are critics themselves, so I guess I’m still getting a fair amount of traditional criticism exposure. The critic who I first thought of was Matt Singer, the editor and critic for ScreenCrush. He always has good reviews that walk the line between being fun and snooty, and some good editorials as well. I also enjoy Sonny Bunch of The Bulwark, who I tend to read because he comes from a different perspective than most other critics (as you can probably tell by the publication he works for). Bunch also has a couple of great podcasts, including Across the Movie Aisle and The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood. I don’t think anyone will get as ubiquitous as Roger Ebert was ever again, but who knows?

23) Favorite movie theater snack(s)

Who am I kidding, it’s popcorn. I also really enjoy some form of soft pretzels, but they’re not always great (and it’s not like they’re scratch made pretzels or anything – they’re just Superpretzel-brand-quality frozen pretzels.) Again, if there were an Alamo Drafthouse near me, maybe I would have something else (ohhh, does beer count as a snack?) Back in the day, there was this weird kids combo box sorta thing at AMC that had a very small amount of popcorn, a small soda, and an Airhead that I used to get a lot. But ultimately, popcorn is the classic movie snack (even at home).

24) Marion Lorne or Patricia Collinge?

I love both of the Hitchcock movies that prompted this question, but I’ll give it to Marion Lorne for her doty but creepy turn in Strangers on a Train.

25) Recent release you wish you’d seen on a big screen

The most obvious choice would have to be the Richard Linklater directed Glen Powell vehicle Hit Man, which apparently did have a short run in a tiny independent theater near me, but I didn’t realize this until it was too late (thanks for nothing, Netflix). A less obvious choice would be The Promised Land, a sorta Danish western starring Mads Mikkelsen that had a limited release earlier this year.

26) Favorite supporting performance in a Sam Peckinpah film

I’m going to go with the most obscure option I can think of: Craig T. Nelson’s mustache (not the actor, just his mustache) in The Osterman Weekend. I mean, damn, look at that thing:

Craig T. Nelson's mustache from The Osterman Weekend

27) Strother Martin or L.Q. Jones?

This sounded familiar and lo, it was part of Professor Peabody’s quiz from 15 years ago. My answer remains the same: L.Q. Jones, not so much for his role in The Wild Bunch, but because of Lone Wolf McQuade – a movie I have an inexplicable affection for, at least partly because L.Q. Jones steals every scene he’s in…

LQ Jones in Lone Wolf McQuade

28) Current actor whose star status you find partially or completely mystifying

I like some of Miles Teller’s movies and I guess he’s a decent enough actor, but I mostly just don’t get it.

29) Reese Witherspoon – Election or Freeway?

I suppose Election is the better film, technically speaking, but I just love the batshit insanity of Freeway, so it gets my vote.

30) Second-favorite Michael Ritchie film

This is probably The Bad News Bears or Wildcats (but I haven’t seen either of those in, like. 30 years or so, I imagine I’d have a different perspective on them these days).

31) Favorite theatrical moviegoing experience of the last three years (2021-2024)

Post-pandemic pickins are slim, but seeing Dune in a jam-packed IMAX theater in King of Prussia (one of the few full-sized IMAX theaters in the country) on the last night before it switched to a different movie (don’t even remember which one) was quite memorable. Plus, it’s one of those movies that really benefits from the the whole IMAX treatment.

32) Favorite Southern-fried movie sheriff

This is not exactly a topic I’m an expert in, but I’ll go with Ned Beatty playing the evil sheriff J.C. Connors in White Lightning.

Ned Beatty from White Lightning

33) Favorite film of 1954

According to my records, I’ve only seen 11 films from 1954, so this should, in theory, be an easy choice. The problem is that, like, 7 of them are stone cold classics. Rear Window is probably the answer. Godzilla is certainly worth considering though (it’s easy to forget how good this is given the excess and downright silliness of much of what followed).

34) A 90-foot wall of water or the world tallest building on fire?

I’m not a huge fan of disaster flicks, but it’s hard to argue that The Towering Inferno isn’t the crest of the wave (even though it’s fifty years old and they’re still making disaster movies these days)…

35) Second-favorite Agnes Varda movie

Faces Places by default, but damn, I didn’t realize just how many directing credits Varda actually has – I should probably watch more of them.

36) Favorite WWII movie made between 1950 and 1975

Pretty hard to top Patton for this one, though I did finally catch up with The Bridge on the River Kwai, which was pretty great… but still not as good at Patton.

Patton

37) After the disappointing (against predictions) box-office weekend for The Fall Guy, writer Matt Singer, perplexed by the relative indifference from ticket-buyers toward a film most expected to be a big hit, asked in his piece for Screengrab,  “What the hell do people want from movies?” To focus the question slightly more narrowly, what the hell do you want out of movies?

I’m a novelty junkie, so as a general statement, I want more originality and less in the way of sequels and reboots. Mid-tier budget movies that can take some chances or display some sort of distinction. I watched Midnight Run recently and found myself lamenting the loss of this sort of mid-tier movie (that is nonetheless a low-key classic). Hard to argue with people who are gunshy due to pricing and theatrical experience these days though.

38) Ned Sparks or Guy Kibbee?

Guy Kibbee! I don’t know why I used an exclamation point there, I don’t entirely know who he is… but I’ve seen movies he’s in, so that’s a step up on Ned Sparks. Take that Ned Sparks!

39) Favorite opening line in a movie

I’ve already used up my quota of Godfather answers today, so let’s just go with the other classic mafia flick, Goodfellas: “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.”

40) Best movie involving radio or a radio broadcast

My first thought was Vanishing Point, where a blind black DJ named “Super Soul” encourages the car chase that comprises the bulk of the movie. But then I thought of the DJ from The Warriors, which is a better movie and a more memorable DJ too.

The DJ from The Warriors

41) Buddy Buddy—yes or no?

I mean, yes. I always answer yes, but despite this film’s middling reputation, who says no to a movie directed by Billy Wilder and starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau?

42) Favorite film of 1934

So here the options are pretty limited by what I’ve actually seen, and The Thin Man is clearly the best of those.

43) Kay Francis or Miriam Hopkins?

This is, what, the third embarrassing mulligan I need to take today?

44) What’s the oddest thing a movie theater employee has ever said to you?

Nothing is coming to mind, but here’s a weird situation worth noting. I went to see The Good Son in the theater with my brother and some of our friends. After getting our seats, I head out to grab some popcorn and soda, but the theater employee wouldn’t let me back in because I was only 15 and the movie was rated R (my brother was 19, which I guess is how I got in the first time). I had to watch Cool Runnings instead. To this day, I still haven’t seen The Good Son, maybe out of spite, but also no one seemed to like it that much.

45) Is there such a thing as an ideal running time for a movie?

It’s certainly possible that a movie can be too long (or even too short), but there’s no strict rule for the length of a movie (though I think going longer than, say, 5 hours, is probably a bad idea). That being said, 90-120 minutes seems to be the sweet spot. If you go longer than that, you probably need to justify the length somehow (and I tend to be pretty easy to please in that respect, though I have been getting less patient as I grow older, so maybe it’s harder than I’m making out).

46) Favorite Roger Corman movie(s)

A Bucket of Blood is probably my favorite (speaking of sub-90 minute movies, this one is perfect at 66 minutes), assuming we limit to Corman-directed movies. I do like his Poe cycle though, and I never did get to The Masque of the Red Death (which seems to be Corman’s best reviewed movie).

I forgot how much fun these Movie Quizzes are, already looking forward to the next one (hopefully in less than 4 years)…

SF Book Review – Part 41: The Road to Roswell and moar!

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I have been woefully neglectful of keeping up with reviews for recent reading, science fiction or not, but there’s only one way to rectify that situation, so here are some reviews of recent reads, including The Road to Roswell, A Half-Built Garden, and Summer’s End.

The Road to Roswell, by Connie Willis – Francie arrives in Roswell, New Mexico as the maid of honor in her college roommate’s UFO themed wedding (the groom is the true-believer, and Francie thinks there’s a fair chance the ceremony will implode). Frustrated by the crowds of gullible conspiracy nuts chasing potential alien sightings, Francie is surprised to find herself abducted by an alien. It looks like a tumbleweed, but it’s got quick and almost infinitely elastic tentacles, and it needs her to drive a car. Where? That’s what Francie needs to figure out. Along the way, they accumulate a rag-tag group of additional inadvertent abductees, and they all try to figure out how to communicate with the alien, which they’ve nicknamed Indy (after Indiana Jones and his whip).

The Road to Rosewell

This is old fashioned stuff, almost to a fault (and probably would be to a lot of the modern SF crowd), but I found it almost refreshing in that way. It’s got a nice blend of genres ranging from alien first contact/abduction/conspiracy, to romance, to a road-trip adventure, to comedy, and more. The UFO nut crowd is in for a healthy dose of merciless mockery, but given the light-hearted tone, it all works reasonably well. Willis relies perhaps a bit too heavily on dialogue, much of it centered on trying to figure out how to communicate with Indy, find out where he’s going, and why. This might bog things down for some folks, but the story’s got a lot of heart, and the logistics of how they learn to work with Indy are clever and well-thought out. He’s an interesting creation, and not something we’ve seen before, which is always a nice touch in a first contact story. It’s not super-deep or earth-shattering, but it’s a fun little caper with some clever SF embedded and worth a look for fans of Willis working in a more light-hearted mode.

A Half-Built Garden, by Ruthanna Emrys – Judy is awakened to a warning of unknown pollutants in the Chesapeake Bay. Assuming it’s a false alarm, she investigates only to find the first alien visitors to Earth. They’ve crossed the galaxy to save humanity from itself. As a technological society, they say we can’t help but destroy our planetary ecosystem, so it’s better for us to live among the stars, where we can control all the variables and establish a more sustainable community. But earth has found a hard-fought balance with nature, thanks to a revolution that sidelined corporations and set about healing the planet. Will the aliens recognize these actions for what they are, or will they save us… by force!? More importantly, why didn’t the aliens use the pronoun badges that Judy’s wife thoughtfully laid out upon their first meeting?

A Half-Built Garden

Alright that last bit is a dig on this story’s ham-fisted attempts to incorporate gender fluidity into a first contact story, but it’s well deserved. I honestly don’t know what this book is really going for though. The first contact dilemma (leave the planet or stay and potentially be forced to leave by the aliens) is bizarrely established as an all-or-nothing choice and the obvious solution, which every reader will develop within like 5 seconds of hearing the dilemma on page 20 (or whatever), is treated like a revelation at the end of the novel. It’s incredibly frustrating that everyone seemingly accepts the framing as an all-or-nothing decision (maybe I’m being too harsh, as there is some debate about whether or not to take the aliens up on their offer – the corporations are totally into it, for instance – but the aliens don’t seem to be very flexible on the matter, which seems weird).

There’s some notion of how the climate revolution has changed the relationship between corporations, nation states, and watershed communities (the new ecologically sound communities that are healing the earth), but it’s all very hand-wavey – there was something called the Dandelion revolution which apparently set us on the right ecological track for reversing the damage of global warming, but there is nothing about how that is actually accomplished other than bland platitudes.

Decision-making is also a big deal in this world and they describe some revolutionary networked technology that is supposed to facilitate these decisions, but this generally feels like every decision becomes a reddit thread that only experts are allowed to contribute to or something. This is a little silly, but it’s at least in good company – this sort of thing has been peppered into tons of science fiction for several decades (even going back to Ender’s Game and A Fire Upon the Deep, where the solution looked more like usenet than Reddit, but still.) It would be nice if the novel published in 2022 progressed things a little more than this does, but it’s not a deep fault or anything.

The real purpose of the novel, and the bulk of its prose, seems to be an exploration of gender ideology and sexual fluidity. There are several different systems at play, and a lot of time is spent… well, not exactly exploring these differences. Everyone is super defensive about their gender and sexual identities, to the point where they often refuse to explain in more detail, even to aliens who are clearly confused by what they’re seeing. Tons of lecturing and scolding about how this or that question is rude and offensive and so on and so forth. It’s so weird that this is the approach.

Speaking of the aliens, they’re actually multiple species, some plant-based, others more, er, spidery, and so on. But they speak perfect English from day one, and while their society seems to prioritize mothers more than ours, they are basically small variations on humans, with no real “alien” characteristics other than their bodies. Maybe if Judy’s wife put out xenogender pronoun badges, things would have gone better.

The book blurb calls Ruthanna Emrys a literary descendent of Ursula K. Le Guin, and boy does that comparison not do her any favors. There’s plenty of room for explorations of gender and identity in SF, and Le Guin was pretty great at it (there’s a reason The Left Hand of Darkness is often cited in this conversation) and lots of other SF authors have found ways to do it that are simultaneously less preachy and yet more informative (even when it comes to pronouns). Clearly this wasn’t a book for me, and it seems to be a bit divisive in that respect, but even if I were really into gender ideology, I don’t think I’d like this very much.

Summer’s End, by John Van Stry – A freshly minted spaceship engineer is forced to take the first berth off of Earth he can find because his stepfather is a politician who wants to have him killed. He ends up on a small freighter plying trade routes throughout the solar system, dodging assassins, pirates, and criminals along the way.

This starts off promisingly enough, if a bit derivative, but it quickly bogs down into some rather severe problems. One is that everything that happens is seemingly coincidental, and our hero just happens to be perfectly suited towards the situations he’s faced with. Alright, fine, that’s not always a major problem, and some degree of that is expected if you’re trying to tell an exciting story worth telling. But when it keeps happening, over and over again, it gets cloying. Another major issue is the way Van Stry treats his female characters. Most of the characters in the novel are underdeveloped, but the women are especially so – and often just objects of sexual fantasy (in particular, after the pirate attack, our protagonist shacks up with a character that is almost comically fantastical). The relationships our protagonist develops are just excruciating. It’s not so much that the overarching theme is wrong, it’s just so bluntly presented and awkward that I cringed whenever the subject came up (which was frustratingly often).

Finally, Van Stry isn’t exactly a stylist, and the prose is functional at best. I’m often quite forgiving of this sort of thing in science fiction because functional prose actually works when you’re exploring interesting ideas and trying to evoke the fabled sense of wonder that powers the best science fiction. But there are…no real interesting ideas here. All the science fictional aspects of the story are mere window dressing, and the politics are incredibly ham-fisted. This was actually nominated for the Prometheus Award last year, and you can see why, but like the aforementioned A Half-Built Garden, the political lectures are not very effective. The ending picks up a bit, but by that point, I was totally out of it. There’s nothing new here and no matter what you think of its politics, it’s not a very good representation of them.

I ended up writing more than expected here, so I’ll just finish off by saying that The Road to Roswell is the only book in this post that I’d actually recommend. I have a few more books I still need to catch up with, not to mention some of those Salty Sea-Dog reviews, but I’ll leave it at this for now…

Weird Movie of the Week: You Never Can Tell

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Last time on Weird Movie of the Week, we got the greatest action movie never made. This time, we’ve got a touching tale of a reincarnated dog trying to solve his own murder called You Never Can Tell:

You Never Can Tell movie poster

An ex-army dog inherits a fortune from his eccentric millionaire owner, and which is poisoned, asks the leader in the heaven for animals to send him back to Earth, as a human private investigator, to solve his own murder.

And if that’s not enough for you, the humanimal PI also apparently falls in love with his former caretaker, the eccentric millionaire’s secretary. To allay any, er, qualms you may have with this, they reveal that her father was a reincarnated Scottish Terrier, so she’s part humanimal as well (humanimals, humanimals everywhere!)

I first learned of this when it showed up on the Criterion Channel and someone recommended it before it fell off the service. I didn’t see it in time, and it’s not available anywhere else, so I filed it away as a potential WMotW, pending actually watching it (I don’t always watch the WMotW, but it’s nice when I can and this seemed like the sort of thing I should watch). However, I did manage to track down a copy on the Internet Archive (It appears to be a VHS rip of a double feature from TNT – You Never Can Tell doesn’t start until minute 34 or so.)

Look, I’m not going to claim it’s classic cinema, but it’s a kooky premise and there’s some goofy jokes (the detective side-eying fire hydrants, his partner, a former Kentucky Racehorse, being able to run really fast, that sort of thing…) and it’s a brisk 78 minutes. Plus, doggies! It’s probably Dean Koontz’s favorite movie.