Link Dump

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General nerdery from the depths of ye olde internets:

  • David Foster Wallace’s 1994 Syllabus: How to Teach Serious Literature with Lightweight Books – I gave up on Infinite Jest at some point, but David Foster Wallace remains intriguing. This Syllabus is for a literature class where Wallace made students read Mary Higgins Clark, Jackie Collins, James Ellroy, Stephen King, and other such popular authors. I love it when great artists slum it with trashy texts, because it’s all in the approach:

    Don’t let any potential lightweightish-looking qualities of the texts delude you into thinking that this will be a blow-off-type class. These “popular” texts will end up being harder than more conventionally “literary” works to unpack and read critically. You’ll end up doing more work in here than in other sections of 102, probably.

    Probably? I want to take this course, probably. Some good thoughts on the art of the syllabus here as well. RIP DFW.

  • How to lose weight in 4 easy steps – Man, step 1 is very true, but also my kryptonite (because this). Also, Step 3 seems oddly specific.
  • LEGO’s letter to parents, and how not to tell a fake when you don’t see one – A few months ago, this lego letter to parents was passed around, and because this is the internets, people assumed it was fake because everyone knows that legos are totes sexist. But no, it’s real, and this post goes through it in exhaustive detail.
  • Watch Agent 47 Kill Children You Don’t Recognize In A HITMAN Viral Video – I can’t believe that they’re making another Hitman movie. If you’ll recall, the first Hitman came out back in 2007, and it was on my “Movies I Want to See Even Though I Know They’ll Suck” list. It did not disappoint. This new one looks slightly more upscale, but will most likely be on a similar list this year. Also, the viral video is pretty funny, but as Devin notes: “Agent 47, the guy from the Hitman: Agent 47 reboot…kills a bunch of YouTube and Vine stars, but since I don’t recognize any of them it just looks like he’s slaughtering children.” Heh?
  • Venture Brothers Sheet Set – Wow.
  • Reset Button: Do it Again, Stupid – Shamus rips into GTA V, mostly nailing several things I don’t like about the game.

And that’s all for now. Toodles.

Hugo Awards: Puppies Unleashed

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As Hugo Awards nomination season hits full swing, the Sad Puppy slates have finally be unleashed. For the uninitiated, the Sad Puppies are a semi-organized response to the notion that recent Hugo slates have trended away from traditional SF, with it’s emphasis on sense of wonder and storytelling (the name emerges out of the notion that recent Hugo slates were so depressing that they were making cute puppies sad, or something along those lines). There is an ideological component to the movement as well, and it seems the Right/Libertarian are on the Puppies’ side, while Left/SJW are opposed. Or something. In reality, I don’t really buy that dichotomy, and that’s one of the reasons I can’t seem to get on board with the typical responses to the Sad Puppies (for it or against it). To me, it’s just another input into the process, which is pretty much how it’s supposed to work.

For the record, Brad Torgersen has posted the official Sad Puppy slate over at his blog. Vox Day has posted a variant, which he calls (perhaps unsurprisingly, given his usual tone) Rabid Puppies. There’s a pretty large overlap, though enough differences to be annoying. Assorted thoughts and ramblings are below:

  • The first thing that jumps out at me with these slates is how huge they are (both are basically a full nominating ballot – somewhere on the order of 50-75 overall between the two lists). I think part of the reason Sad Puppies 2 enjoyed success last year was that the list was relatively small (12 choices in various categories), so the impact was concentrated on those works. Remember, the people who nominate for the hugo are actually people! They will not have read this entire slate and chances are, there are plenty of things on the slate that they did read, but would not nominate. Anecdotal evidence indicates this was the case last year, and even the hard numbers show that there was significant variance in the amount of nominating votes for each work. I expect people’s votes will be spread out across the entire slate, and since there are so many options, that may spread things too thin.
  • Comparing the two lists is interesting, as is the tone in which they’re presented. Torgersen is very careful to indicate that his list “is a recommendation. Not an absolute.” He has repeatedly mentioned that it’s not about politics, but about story and fun. He also acknowledges the idea that you might not like works on the slate (though “we suspect you might”). Torgersen also, much to his credit, made sure that his own works would not appear on his slate. Day, on the other hand, is extremely combative about the whole situation and appears to be much more ideologically motivated (he explicitly mentions the “science fiction Right”). He encourages folks who trust his opinion on the subject to “nominate them precisely as they are”. He also nominated himself in multiple categories (though in the editing categories, not the fiction categories). On the other hand, he nominated Coherence on the Dramatic Presentation Long Form category, which is a personal favorite that I’d love to see get nominated (even though it probably wouldn’t). This is why I can never get on board with Sad Puppies, nor can I really get too worked up about it either. Just because a work appears there doesn’t mean it is or is not worthy of a nomination.
  • In terms of The Martian, it looks like fears of its eligibility (or lack thereof) means that it was not included in either slate. I actually emailed the Sasquan administrators, but their (perfectly reasonable) response was: “the standard Hugo committee policy for many years has been to not make suggestions on nominations or rule on eligibility of nominated items until nominations close”. Apparently, when eligibility of a specific work was announced in the past, other nominees felt it represented an endorsement, so the policy is to maintain impartiality. This makes perfect sense. Interestingly, Vox Day actually quotes me on the matter, though as usual, his tone is way more combative and makes my post seem equally so, even though I’m not. My example of a self-published work that was later published and then nominated was John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. Day hates Scalzi, and uses my example as evidence that the Hugos are corrupt or something. This was not my intention at all, and it’s weird to see my words deployed in such a fashion. Indeed, I’ve always thought that the Sad Puppy attitude towards Scalzi has been rather weird. Yes, Scalzi is outspoken on his blog about certain leftist issues, but for the most part, his fiction is fantastic and entertaining stuff. You could make an argument that something like Redshirts was only nominated because he’s popular with a certain segment of fandom, but that’s the kind of thing that happens with populist awards. More to the point, Scalzi’s work tends to be that more old-school science fiction. Redshirts has it’s flaws, but it’s a very fun book, exactly the sort of thing I’d expect to see on the Sad Puppy slate (except that, obviously, it enjoys wide popularity across most of fandom). That never made sense to me. On the other hand, “Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue” is, in fact, a pretty lame nomination.
  • Eric S. Raymond appears on both slates as a nominee for the Campbell Award (for the most promising new writer in SF), which, as he himself notes, is a little strange:

    I will stipulate that I think my one published work of SF, the short story Sucker Punch, isn’t bad. If it were someone else’s and I was wearing my reviewer hat, I’d probably say something encouraging about it being a solid, craftsmanlike first effort that delivers what its opening promises and suggests the author might be able to deliver quality work in the future.

    But, Campbell Award material? A brilliant comet in the SF firmament I am not. I don’t really feel like I belong on that shortlist – and if I’m wrong and I actually do, I fear for the health of the field.

    What bothers me more is the suspicion that my name has been put forward for what amount to political reasons.

    I’ve read Sucker Punch and think it’s a perfectly cromulent short story, but if I were to nominate it for something, it’d be for the short story category (which, I suspect will not happen, since it will probably be a crowded category for me by the time nominations close). As a Campbell nominee, I would want some sense that he, you know, intends to write a lot more fiction. I have no doubt that he could write more fiction (even great fiction), I just don’t see him taking that on. He’s been pretty clear that his focus is on hacking and Open Source advocacy (at which, he is very good and very successful) and that he did this mostly on a lark. Which makes this nomination kinda confusing. (Update: he basically confirms this in the comments)

  • Speaking of Eric Raymond, he has some keen insights into the whole culture war of sorts that’s happening in SF right now (of which Sad Puppies is a symptom) that pretty well match up with where I’m coming from. His key insight is that this is not a political issue, but rather a matter of “Literary Status Envy”:

    Literary status envy is the condition of people who think that all genre fiction would be improved by adopting the devices and priorities of late 19th- and then 20th-century literary fiction. Such people prize the “novel of character” and stylistic sophistication above all else. They have almost no interest in ideas outside of esthetic theory and a very narrow range of socio-political criticism. They think competent characters and happy endings are jejune, unsophisticated, artistically uninteresting. They love them some angst.

    People like this are toxic to SF, because the lit-fic agenda clashes badly with the deep norms of SF. Many honestly think they can fix science fiction by raising its standards of characterization and prose quality, but wind up doing tremendous iatrogenic damage because they don’t realize that fixating on those things (rather than the goals of affirming rational knowability and inducing a sense of conceptual breakthrough) produces not better SF but a bad imitation of literary fiction that is much worse SF.

    His post on the deep norms of SF is also worth checking out. I find myself mostly agreeing with this analysis (and honestly, he gives a much better primer for the factions involved and general situation than I do above). All those things that literary fiction hates are what I love about science fiction. And I tend to dislike the angst that permeates literary fiction (that this often manifests as wallowing in identity politics and misery is incidental). This focus on literary fiction is why stuff like Wakulla Springs gets nominated for a Hugo, despite not even being slightly SF or even Fantasy. It’s a very well written story, to be sure, but it’s so far outside the boundaries of any type of genre fiction (let along SF) that I can see why the Sad Puppy campaign is happening.

So there you have it. I do not particularly hate or love Sad Puppies. Call that feckless if you want. I just know what I like. Sometimes that happens to coincide with the Sad Puppies, sometimes not. Go figure.

2014 Kaedrin Movie Awards: The Arbitrary Awards

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We’ve given out the formal awards, now it’s time to get random. Sometimes movies are weird or flawed in ways that don’t fit well into a traditional awards setting, but they can also have excellent bits nonetheless. The point of the Arbitrary Awards is to recognize this oddities. A few of these have become an annual tradition, but most are just, well, arbitrary. Let’s do it:

  • The “You know what happens when a toad gets struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else” Award for Worst Dialogue: Divergent. Unless this was actually supposed to be a comedy, this one takes the cake for consistently awful dialogue. I pretty much laughed my way through the movie, so it at least has that “So bad it’s good” thing going for it (indeed, the earnest way in which the lines are delivered is what makes it work – if it was supposed to be a comedy, it almost certainly wouldn’t work). Another front-runner for this award was Interstellar for it’s “Love is the one thing that we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.” speech.
  • The Proximity to Jason Vorhees Award for Heroic Stupidity: Blood Glacier. This is the worst movie of the year, by far. Everything about it is stupid (also a front runner for the worst dialogue award).
  • The Park Chan-Wook Award for Most Elaborate Vengeance Scheme: Gone Girl. Lots of elaborate plans going on in this one, one of my favorite movies of the year. While we’re talking about vengeance, also a shout out to Blue Ruin, which is very good, but part of its point is that the vengeance isn’t at all elaborate.
  • Best Hero/Badass (Non-Human Edition): The Nephilim, from Noah. This is a weird, adventurous take on the Noah story, as evidenced by the Nephilim, basically giant rock monsters that are supposed to be fallen angels or something like that. Whatever, they’re giant rock creatures, and they fight for God! Also note that Godzilla actually met my criteria for the singular award (and was nominated there), because he’s an individual, not really a class of creature. And he was the best part of his movie, so there is that.
  • Best Villain/Badass (Non-Human Edition): The mirror from Oculus. The movie has its flaws, but the notion of the villain being a mirror that plays with perceptions is brilliant and plays out really well in the movie.
  • Best Long Take/Tracking Shot: Birdman. Duh. I mean, I have my issues with the movie, but the whole film basically appears to be one continuous shot, how can it not win this award?
  • Best End Credits Sequence: 22 Jump Street. I won’t ruin the sequence for you; suffice to say it is absolutely brilliant. Honorable mention to Guardians of the Galaxy for the Groot/Drax sequence in the credits.
  • Achievement in the Field of Batshit Insanity: Moebius. I don’t… I can’t… um, what the fuck? This is surprisingly compelling (it has no dialogue, but manages to visually tell a story much better than a lot of films, even if there are some reallly incongruous events) for how batshit insane it is, but I just, um, shit. Words fail me. Don’t watch this movie. I know this will make some people want to watch it more, and to be sure, those folks might still survive, but I can’t in good conscience recommend this movie.
  • Coolest Fictional Hotel of the Year: The Continental, from John Wick. You might be tempted to put The Grand Budapest Hotel here, but in reality, The Continental is just way cooler. I mean, it’s a hotel that caters exclusively to assassins. Cooler than liquid nitrogen.
  • The Rod Serling Memorial Award: The One I Love. A very Twilight Zone-like movie that will surely get more love in my top 10.

And that just about covers it. We’re coming down the homestretch, just the top 10 and Oscar commentary remains. The top 10 will come next week or the week after, depending on if I feel like I can see a few of the movies that I’m missing at this point…

Link Dump: Hugo Nomination Edition

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Just some links that may prove to be of some use for folks in the Hugo nomination game.

  • 2015 Hugo Sheet of Doom – This is a public Google doc with potential nominees broken out in each category. Some of the nominees are clearly, er, longshots, but at least it’s a source where things are categorized by, um, category (so you don’t need to figure out a way to hack a Kindle book/story to do a word count or something). It’s public, so you can add stuff if you’d like, but play nice (I did my part and added Coherence and The One I Love to the Long Form Dramatic Presentation Category – and you should totally watch and nominate if you like them, because I’m doubting they will get there without a little help).
  • Chaos Horizon – An extremely thorough attempt to predict Hugo and Nebula (novel) nominees. It is basically a value neutral attempt, so there’s very little in the way of proselytizing, just lots of collation and correlation, and plenty of analysis. Dude is even starting to predict the 2016 Hugos…
  • Announcing Sad Puppies 3 – Brad Torgerson takes the baton from Larry Correia and is leading the charge this year. It is mildly less combative, but will no doubt raise a lot of hackles when it manages to get something nominated. It does still seem less about “These books are awesome and deserve recognition” and more about “Other people are ideological and we need to fight them” or some such thing. I can’t ever seem to get on board with this because it’s just too whiny. He’s also written a few follow up posts, but has not posted a list yet (and frankly, I would not really recommend wading through the comments). It’s worth noting, though, that the folks who bought a supporting membership last year are still eligible to nominate this year, so there’s a fair chance that we’ll see more Sad Puppy nominees…

That’s all for now. I’m sure I’ll be posting more about the Hugos as time goes on.

2014 Kaedrin Movie Award Winners!

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The nominations for the 2014 Kaedrin Movie Awards were announced last week. Today, I’ll be announcing the winners of said awards. Next week, I’ll cover less traditional categories in what we like to call the Arbitrary Awards, and not long after that, I’ll post my top 10 of 2014. At some point, those other awards, I think they’re called Oscars or something, will happen as well, and we’ll probably do our normal predictions and live-tweeting as well. But I digress, let’s get back to the important stuff:

  • Best Villain/Badass: Koba, played by Toby Kebbell in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Despite a reasonable crop of villains this year, it appears that the only non-human nominee takes the cake. And Koba is a fantastic villain, in part because you can actually see where he’s coming from. Of course, he ends up going way to far with his actions (he really becomes a turd, a villain you love to hate), but his mistrust of humans is not unwarranted.

    Koba

    Honorable mention goes to Amy Dunne, played Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl, who may end up being a more memorable villain in the long term, but is also almost cartoonishly evil. Also of note is Eva Green, who gives her all in a rather awful movie (300: Rise of an Empire) and even chews up the screen in a movie not nominated that I just caught up with: Sin City: A Dame to Kill For) (another terrible and unnecessary sequel). To the extent that these two movies are watchable, it’s almost entirely due to Eva Green’s fearless performances. Someone needs to give her a real vehicle.

  • Best Hero/Badass: Rita, played by Emily Blunt in Edge of Tomorrow. This was an difficult choice, and I kept bouncing between Rita, John Wick, and M. Gustave. In truth, I do think that the character of Rita gets a bit of short shrift in the end, but she’s just so great all the way through and I think that’s primarily due to Emily Blunt’s performance. Also, she uses a helicopter blade as a weapon, which is totally badass.

    Rita

    As much as I enjoyed John Wick and as cromulent as Keanu Reeves is in the part, there’s nothing there we haven’t seen before. As for Ralph Fiennes, well, we’ll get to him in a moment. And the other nominees here were no slouch. Godzilla has many flaws as a film, but the titular monster is not one of them and really saved the movie for me. I love Groot, but it’s hard to single out any individual member of the Guardians of the Galaxy for this award. Miss Duan would have been an interesting choice, but her character takes some weird turns, as does Journey to the West in general. Still, Rita takes it.

  • Best Comedic Performance: M. Gustave, played by Ralph Fiennes in The Grand Budapest Hotel. A big upset here, seeing as though I didn’t even bother to nominate Fiennes for this award last week. However, I definitely meant to (and thought I did!) and catching some of Grand Budapest on TV this week really cemented it. It seems that write-in votes have a much better chance when only one person is voting. The problem with the nominees is that they tend to be part of a larger ensemble, and while fantastic, they don’t quite have the singular quality that this award implies. Fiennes performance is truly a masterclass, and hysterically funny to boot, so he takes it. Of the other nominees, I was thinking Channing Tatum, Jason Bateman, or James Franco, and thankfully, I don’t have to actually make that choice. Phew.
  • Breakthrough Performance: Jillian Bell in 22 Jump Street. This is always a weird award, but I’m giving it to Bell for her scene stealing performance opposite Jonah Hill. A small part, to be sure, but she shows great promise and wonderful comedic timing. Runner up would be Dave Bautista for Guardians of the Galaxy, who was just so unexpected. Chris Pratt also worth a mention, though I guess he’d been breaking through in smaller roles for a while now. Also of note, a bevy of performances Gone Girl that were great and forced me to hit up IMDB to see what all these great actors have been doing. Unfortunately, the breadth of options split the votes between Gone Girl nominees, so they couldn’t win.
  • Most Visually Stunning: Under the Skin. And not just because it stars Scarlett Johansson in a revealing part. My preference for this award trends more towards well photographed movies than special effects extravaganzas, which is what befell Interstellar and maybe The Lego Movie. Still lots to choose from though, and all the nominees are rather gorgeous, in their way.

    Under the Skin

    I just wanted to throw Under the Skin some love now, as it’s a movie I respect but don’t particularly love (and the visuals are what kept my attention, despite the movie being way too long for its content).

  • Best Sci-Fi or Horror Film: Coherence and The One I Love (Tie). A pretty good crop of nominees this year, and I really just couldn’t decide between these two low-budget SF(ish) films (Both highly recommended for SF fans). Funny, because this year boasted a few high-budget blockbusters, something that doesn’t normally happen in this category. In the end, had to go with my gut on this one.
  • Best Sequel/Reboot: Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Man, this category is unusually strong this year. I often find that comic book series often have a great second film, and Captain America really delivered in that respect.

    The Cap and Black Widow, just chillin

    The rest of the nominees were also rather good, with special mention to Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, mostly because I really didn’t care for the first movie (it was fine, but I didn’t get the love for it).

  • Biggest Disappointment: How to Train Your Dragon 2. A funny choice, because I think I like this better than all the other nominees. The thing with this award, though, is that it’s a game of expectations. I didn’t expect Spider Man 2 to be anything special, so while it was still mildy disappointing (because it’s not like I wanted it to be as bad as it was), it didn’t provide quite as much of a problem because my expectations just weren’t that high. But I really, really grew to love the first How to Train Your Dragon (thanks to frequent cable airings at some point), so I was much more crestfallen by the sequel, even though it was “fine” in most respects.
  • Best Action Sequences: The Raid 2: Berandal. Duh. Though honorable mentions go to The Winter Soldier for a few great, varied sequences, Fury for what may be the best tank battles on film (a pity the rest of the movie doesn’t live up to that), and John Wick for just being generally badass (I feel bad that I’m shutting it out in the awards so far, so perhaps we’ll see something in the Arbitrary Awards for this sucker).
  • Best Plot Twist/Surprise: Gone Girl. Always a tricky award to talk about, as I don’t really want to give anything away (is just nominating a movie for an award a spoiler in itself? I sure hope not!) This movie, though, really kept me on my toes. Even when I had a decent handle on what would happen, something else that was unexpected would happen. Other nominees were good too, will refrain from spoilers. You should totally watch them all.
  • Best High Concept Film: The Lego Movie and Boyhood (Tie). It’s unbelievable that The Lego Movie turned out to be this fantastic, sticking to its gimmick when it comes to the animation, but then doing other interesting and playful things with the narrative that were completely unexpected (and yes, high concept). Boyhood is a movie I have a tremendous amount of respect for due to the gimmick at its heart: it was filmed over the course of 12 years with the same actors. This way of capturing the passage of time over years is rare and impressive, but the reason I can’t just give the award to Boyhood is that I just didn’t particularly enjoy the movie. I know, I know, I’m the worst. I do want to recognize the effort though… Also, I probably should have nominated Birdman for this category, even if I don’t think I’d give it the win (don’t worry, it’ll get some love in the Arbitrary Awards).
  • 2014’s 2013 Movie of the Year: The Way Way Back. One of the many coming-of-age tales that peppered 2013’s movie landscape, this was a really enjoyable variation on the theme (and actually better than several of the others I saw that year). Frozen comes in a close second place in the voting, but alas…

And there you have it! Stay tuned for the Arbitrary Awards and (eventually) a top 10 of 2014…

Hugo Award Season 2014

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It’s that time of year again. The Hugo Award Nomination Period has begun, and of course, all the requisite whining has begun. People whining about Awards Eligibility Posts, people whining about politics, people whining about the people whining about politics. And wonder of wonders, some people are actually talking about books they like, compiling lists of things to check out before nominations close, or coming up with thorough models to predict who will get a nomination this year. How revolutionary. I’ll do my best to focus on same, but I’m sure I’ll be sucked into some controversy or other.

Last year, I was a little gunshy about participating in the nomination process. This was mostly due to the fact that I hadn’t really read a comprehensive selection of 2013 books or stories. It was also before I realized that some people don’t bother reading all the nominees before voting or nominate things for purely ideological reasons. I also realized that I was very nearly one of the two votes that could have put Lauren Beukes’s excellent time travel serial killer novel The Shining Girls on the ballot. This year, I won’t claim to have read particularly deep into the catalog, but I read more than I did last time and there are definitely some stories I would like to nominate. My current nomination ballot, some thoughts on same, and some things I’d like to read before I finalize my ballot are below. Knock yourself out. Comments are still wonky, so if you have any recommendations, feel free to email me at mciocco at gmail or hit me up on twitter @mciocco (or @kaedrinbeer if you’re a lush).

Best Novel:

All three are kinda longshots. A Darkling Sea has the best chance to make it, as there is at least some minimal buzz surrounding it. A Sword Into Darkness is self-published and not typical Hugo material, but I really enjoyed it (and not for nothing, but there’s a fair chance it would make the Sad Puppies slate, which could improve its chances). The Martian suffers from eligibility issues – it was self published in 2012, then snapped up by a publisher and put into fancy editions and audio books in 2014 (where it has sold extremely well). General consensus seems to be that it will not be eligible, but I think there are a few things going for it. One is that self-published works that get bought up by a real publisher and come out a year or two later have made it onto the ballot before (an example that comes to mind is Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, which was self-published in 2003 or 2004, after which it was promptly bought up by Tor and republished in 2005, garnering a Hugo nomination in 2006). Another is that I’ve heard that version published in 2014 has some differences from the self-published version, but I have not confirmed that (and it’s very possible that this is not true), which might call some things into question. In any case, unless someone official makes a definitive statement about The Martian being ineligible, I plan to include it on my ballot.

Best Novelette?

  • Atmosphæra Incognita by Neal Stephenson (from Hieroglyph)
  • A Hotel in Antarctica by Geoffrey Landis (from Hieroglyph)

Here’s the thing with short fiction, I think it’s pretty easy to tell the difference between a short story and a novella and a novel, but when you throw novelette into the mix, it becomes much less intuitive. I’m pretty sure the above two stories are long enough to be a Novelette, but I’m not positive. Also, you’ll be seeing a lot of Hieroglyph in the nominations today. Hopefully I’ll be able to pad this out with some other sources of short fiction as time goes on. Also, maybe I’ll find a novella or two!

Best Short Story:

  • Periapsis by James L. Cambias (from Hieroglyph)
  • Covenant by Elizabeth Bear (from Hieroglyph)
  • The Day It All Ended by Charlie Jane Anders (from Hieroglyph)

This is a a pretty good list here, and I’m reasonably certain that at least one will come close (Covenant seems to have some buzz). I will most certainly be checking out additional short stories though, so hopefully I can find some more nominees.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form:

While I don’t claim comprehensive selection in my reading, I’m much closer when it comes to film. Alas, I’m pretty sure my two favorite nominees (Coherence and The One I Love) will not make the cut, and the one I’m most ambivalent about (Interstellar) seems to be a shoe-in. I also wouldn’t be surprised if movies I didn’t care for do well, notably Snowpiercer.

Again, comments are still wonky on here right now, so if you have any recommendations, feel free to email me at mciocco at gmail or hit me up on twitter @mciocco (or @kaedrinbeer if you’re a lush).

I think we’ll leave it there for now and revisit some other categories or perhaps some stuff I want to read next week. Until then, happy nominating.

2014 Kaedrin Movie Awards

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Only a few weeks late this year, I’ve done a much better job keeping up than the past couple years. As of right now, I’ve seen 75 movies that could be considered a 2014 release (as per usual, there are borderline cases where, for instance, a 2013 movie sneaks onto the list because it only played festivals or foreign markets in that year and wasn’t really available for me to watch). More than your typical moviegoer, but probably significantly less than your typical critic. But I caught up with a significant portion of that list in the past month or so, and am finally able to commence the ninth annual Kaedrin Movie Awards. [Previous Installments here: 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013]

Same general rules apply: Must be a 2014 release (with caveats mentioned above) and I obviously have to have seen the movie (and while I have seen a lot of movies, I don’t pretend to have seen a comprehensive selection). Standard disclaimers about subjectivity and personal preference, because who wants to live in a world where we all liked the same stuff for the same reasons? That would be a boring world. So let’s get to it:

Best Villain/Badass

It often feels like a given year can only have great villains or great heroes, but not both. For instance, last year was a terrible year for villainy (and a rather good one for heroism). Not so this year! I had no problem populating both categories, and there’s some solid choices on both lists. As with previous years, my picks in this category are limited to individuals, not groups (i.e. no vampires or zombies as a general menace, etc…)

Best Hero/Badass

As mentioned above, this was a good year for heroism too, perhaps a slight overmatch for the villainy, but that’s the way these things should work. Again limited to individuals and not groups (so I only grabbed one Guardian of the Galaxy, even if I liked the whole group!)

Best Comedic Performance

This category gets tougher every year and I find I need to just pick an individual from an ensemble that is representative of the movie. Perhaps I should just bite the bullet and change this to Comedic Ensemble or something. That being said, lots to choose from this year:

Breakthrough Performance

Always an interesting category to populate, I feel like the big actor showcases this year were all about people I was already very familiar with (notably something like Birdman). As with previous years, my main criteria for this category was if I watched a movie, then immediately looking up the actor/actress on IMDB to see what else they’ve done (or where they came from). This can sometimes even happen for a long established actor, so yes, I already know who Tyler Perry was, but I didn’t know he was doing stuff like this. Yes, the criteria is vague, but the fun of these awards is that they’re supposed to be idiosyncratic and weird:

Most Visually Stunning

Sometimes even bad movies can look really great… and we’ve got a pretty interesting mix of stuff this year. Indeed, this category is downright stuffed:

Best Sci-Fi or Horror Film

I like to give a little love to my favorite genres, hence this category. When I started this category, I always had trouble finding good SF movies, so I had to pad out the category with horror. But we’ve seen a big flourish in independent, micro-budget SF over the past few years, such that SF is kinda leading the charge these days.

Best Sequel/Reboot

Usually a very difficult category to populate, I had no problems at all this year.

Biggest Disappointment

A surprisingly difficult category to populate. Usually, I can think of a few additional movies that would fit, and it’s not like there weren’t a bunch of movies I saw that I didn’t enjoy, I just wasn’t expecting much of those movies so I couldn’t really be that disappointed… Interestingly, they’re all sequels, and most of them aren’t really that bad, they were just disappointing.

Best Action Sequences

This award isn’t for individual action sequences, but rather an overall estimation of each film, and it’s been a rather fantastic year for action movies…

Best Plot Twist/Surprise

Well, I suppose even listing nominees here constitutes something of a spoiler, but it’s a risk we’ll have to take, right?

Best High Concept Film

This is always a strange category to populate because the idea itself is a bit nebulous, but nevertheless, there are always a few interesting choices…

2014’s 2013 Movie of the Year

This category gets more difficult every year, but there are some good choices this year, and I’m definitely going to have a couple good options next year…

So it looks like Guardians of the Galaxy and The Lego Movie are leading the way with 5 nominations apiece, followed closely by Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Gone Girl, and Inherent Vice with 4 nominations. And the list expands as we go from there (5 movies with 3 noms, 8 with 2, and even more with just a single nod). So I’m going to noodle these nominations for a week and announce the winners next Sunday, followed by the traditional Arbitrary Awards and hopefullly, a full top 10 list for 2014. This should be all wrapped up before the Oscars, which I guess I’ll be live-tweeting or something again this year. Stay tuned!

Weird Movie of the Week

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Last time on Weird Movie of the Week, we covered a touching tale of dolphin assassins. Today, we tackle The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.

Young Bart Collins, lulled to sleep by the monotony of his piano lessons, dreams of a castle ruled by his piano teacher, the eccentric Dr. Teriwilliker. Dr. T is determined to prove that his “Happy Fingers Method” of teaching piano is the best method in the world. Having banished all other musical instruments to the dungeon, Dr. T lures 500 reluctant little boys to perform in a colossal concert on the grandest grand piano ever built. In his effort to escape, Bart comes in contact with some of the strangest characters imaginable – Siamese twins on roller skates, a human drum and the most memorable villian since the “Grinch”. Filled with surreal landscapes and tongue-twisting rhymes, for which Dr. Seuss is famous, this is a movie children and their parents will love to watch again and again.

Or, you know, not. Audiences at the time apparently didn’t, as this was a colossal bomb. Still, it boasts a screenplay by Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss), even if he pretty much disowned the film and made quippy remarks like “As to who was most responsible for this debaculous fiasco, I will have nothing more to say until all the participants have passed away, including myself.”

Also of note to eagle-eyed Simpsons fans is the fact that the name Teriwilliker was lifted from this film to be used as Sideshow Bob’s last name. And we all know that Bart is Sideshow Bob’s nemesis, just as this movie’s Bart is Dr. T’s nemesis. It’s amazing to me that I’m still, after 25 years, unpacking references made by The Simpsons.

The Public Domain

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I got curious about the Public Domain recently and was surprised by what I found. On the first day of each year, Public Domain Day celebrates the moment when copyrights expire, enter the Public Domain, and join their brethren, such as the plays of Shakespeare, the music of Mozart, and the books of Dickens. Once in the Public Domain, a work can be freely copied, remixed, translated into other languages, and adapted into stage plays, movies, or other media, free from restrictions. Because they are free to use, they can live on in perpetuity.

Of course, rights are based on jurisdiction, so not all countries will benefit equally every year. In 2015, our neighbors up north in Canada celebrated the entrance of the writings of Rachel Carlson, Ian Fleming, and Flannery O’Connor to the Public Domain (along with hundreds of others). I’d be curious how a James Bond movie made in Canada would fare here in the U.S., as they now have the right to make such a movie. Speaking of the U.S., how many works do you think entered our Public Domain this year?

Not a single published work will enter the Public Domain this year. Next year? Nope! In fact, no published work will enter the Public Domain until 2019. This is assuming that Congress does not, once again, extend the Copyright term even longer than it is now (which is currently the Author’s lifetime plus 70 years) – which is how we ended up in this situation in the first place.

I’ve harped on this sort of thing before, so I won’t belabor the point. I was just surprised that the Public Domain was so dead in the United States. Even works that gained notoriety for being accidentally let into the public domain, like It’s a Wonderful Life, are being clamped down on. Ironically, It’s a Wonderful Life only became famous once it was in the Public Domain and thus free to televise (frequent airings led to popularity). In the 1990s, the original copyright holder seized on some obscure court precedents and reasserted their rights based on the original musical score and the short story on which the film was based. The details of this are unclear, but the result is clear as crystal: it’s not aired on TV very often anymore because NBC says they have exclusive rights (and they only air it a couple times a year) and derivative works, like a planned sequel, are continually blocked.

I don’t know of a solution, but I did want to reflect on what the year could have brought us. There goes my plans for a Vertigo remake!

Link Dump

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Random stuff found whilst spelunking the depths of the internets:

And that’s all for now. Proceed.