|
|
By Scott A. Cupp, on May 22nd, 2012 Forgotten Films: The Seeker (2007)
This is the 66th in my series of Forgotten Obscure or Neglected Films
 Back in the late 70’s I read a lot of young adult fantasy. I had a good bookstore and a wonderful sales lady who helped me get many titles which they would not have normally carried. This included stuff like Patricia McKillip and the Riddlemaster series and Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising sequence.
So, when I saw that THE DARK IS RISING novel had been filmed, I was excited. The five novels in the sequence were very good, among the best of YA fantasy then (and now). But the initial reviews were not so hot. In fact, they were regularly mediocre if not awful. And I did not go to see the film.
One day as I was browsing my local Blockbuster I found a DVD of the film in the 5 for $20 stack. Four dollars is cheaper than the price of the ticket so I went ahead and got it. The other day I sat down and watched it.
The film deals with Will Stanton (Alexander Ludwig), a young American boy living in England with his family which includes four of his five brothers (one is in college) and his sister. He is very much the outsider, picked on at school and by his brothers (what little brother is not tormented?). He is inquisitive and bright. So when he turns 14 it is surprising what all begins to happen. He finds himself the center of several people’s attention and odd things begin to happen around him. The local rich lady Miss Greythorne (Frances Conroy) specifically stops her Rolls Royce and asks if he and the rest of the family are coming to her Christmas party. Crows seem to follow him everywhere. Weather is weird around him.
Continue reading FORGOTTEN FILM: THE SEEKER (2007) »
By Scott A. Cupp, on May 17th, 2012  FORGOTTEN BOOK: THE IMPERIUM GAME by K. D. WENTWORTH, 1994
This is the 98th in my series of Forgotten Books.
I had been planning on doing one of K. D. Wentworth’s novels as a Forgotten Book for some time. I had them all and she is not nearly as well known as I felt she should be. And she’s a friend of mine, so that never hurts.
Then, her husband called me and told me that she had passed. I knew she had been fighting cancer for a while (less than a year) and that she was in the hospital with pneumonia. But just the day before, things had been looking better and they thought she would be out in a day or so. So, I missed my opportunity to show her this review and to see her again.
Anyway, I still wanted to discuss this book. Kathy began publishing in 1988 with an appearance in a Writers of the Future anthology (#4, if I recall correctly). She sold stories regularly and began to work on a novel. THE IMPERIUM GAME was published as part of the Del Rey Discovery line which included writers such as L. Warren Douglas, Carol Severance, Mary Rosenblum, Nicola Griffith, and more. It sported a nice cover from Nicholas Jainschigg. They even issued trading cards to help promote the books.
Continue reading FORGOTTEN BOOK: THE IMPERIUM GAME by K. D. Wentworth, 1994 »
By Scott A. Cupp, on May 15th, 2012 Forgotten Films: The Green Slime (1968)
This is the 65th in my series of Forgotten Obscure or Neglected Films
 The summer of 1969 saw THE GREEN SLIME try to come into my life, but I was not having it. The film had been released in Japan in late 1968 but had yet to cross over to America. But at 17, I knew a turkey when I saw one. Remember in 1968, just a year earlier we had seen the original PLANET OF THE APES and 2001: A SPACE ODDYSSEY. From the poster on TV previews, I could tell that THE GREEN SLIME was not going to be a rival of those films.
So, I waited another 42 years before I saw it. It showed on Turner classic the other day and I DVR’d it to watch at my convenience. And, I have to say, I may have rushed that viewing a bit.
The premise is not too bad. An asteroid is on a collision course with Earth and one man and his team have to encounter it and blow it up. I can remember one summer where there two films with that premise. Add to that the idea that the crew may encounter some alien like and bring it back on board where it becomes damn near invincible. I recall 4 films with ALIEN in the title that fit that bill (as well as the forthcoming PROMETHEUS).
What makes this film into the turkey is that unlike those films, this one has no production standards. The monsters and the sets seem to have been produced for $50 or so (there may have been some change to the producers). The script lacked the qualities of that produced by Rod Serling (POTA); Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick (2001) or Dan O’Bannon (Alien). THE GREEN SLIME had a screenplay from Tom Rowe, Charles Sinclair and William (Bill) Finger. Comics and Batman fans should recognize that last name as probably the second most important figure in the development of Batman (after Bob Kane).
Continue reading FORGOTTEN FILM: THE GREEN SLIME (1968) »
By Scott A. Cupp, on May 10th, 2012 FORGOTTEN BOOK: MYTHAGO WOOD by Robert Holdstock, 1984
This is the 76th in my series of Forgotten Books.
 Robert Holdstock died a few years ago and while I never met him in person I have wonderful memories of the worlds he created. Chief among them is Mythago Wood, which he used for several books. This is the first of those books and it justly won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in Tucson in 1985 (in a tie with BRIDGE OF BIRDS by Barry Hughart, another wonderful book). The novella version, covering the first third of the book, had also been nominated in 1982 but missed that award.
In MYTHAGO WOOD, soldier Steven Huxley is recovering from World War II in France when he is summoned home in 1946 when he is notified of his father’s death by his brother Christian. His father had been strangely distant and distracted when Steven had been home and had not noticed much when he went off to war. Steven returns home to Oak Lodge in Herefordshire. Oak Lodge lies on the edge of a three square mile wood that backs right up to the house.
While going through the house, Christian and Steven discover much about their father’s life and the attraction the wood had on him. His notebooks indicate that it is something beyond what they expect. Deep within the woods lie all of Man’s gods and legends. There are things there that call into the night and occasionally spill over. Their father travelled that land constantly, noting maps and unusual occurrences within his notebooks.
Mythagos, the earliest forms of legends, live and are created within these woods. They called to their father and now they call to both Christian and Steven. Each will succumb to them in their own time and way. First Christian and then Steven.
Continue reading FORGOTTEN BOOK: MYTHAGO WOOD by Robert Holdstock, 1984 »
By Scott A. Cupp, on May 8th, 2012 Forgotten Films: The Wasp Woman (1959)
This is the 64th in my series of Forgotten Obscure or Neglected Films
 I was in Dallas recently visiting with my friend Dwight when I tried to get him to watch INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS, the only film I ever walked out of twice in the same showing. But that is not the film before us today. It is a short leap from bee girls to a wasp woman and this one was on TCM the other morning and I thought that it might be another fun forgotten film.
Cosmetics queen Janice Starlin’s (Susan Cabot) company is suffering. No one wants to admit it at first but the truth comes out. Janice has been the face of the company and she is aging. (My god, she’s 40!) A new model does not have the same effect and company sales have dropped roughly 20% (by my guess) from previous levels. They need a miracle to survive.
Enter Mr. Eric Zinthrop (Michael Mark) who claims to be able to reverse the aging process. She shows her tests made on rats and a cat which reverse the aging process. Anxious to see what happens, Starlin hires Zinthrop, much to the dismay of her chiefs of staff. They have no idea what he is working on and think he is charlatan. It is a short jump to using the serum he has devised on Starlin. The product derives from the royal jelly produced by wasp queens within their colonies.
Continue reading Forgotten Film: The Wasp Woman (1959) »
By Sanford Allen, on May 4th, 2012  Broderick and DiFilippo's new book catalogs the best SF novels of recent years. San Antonio-based author/critic Damien Broderick and his fellow author/critic Paul DiFilippo recently took on the daunting task of deciding on the best science fiction novels released from 1985 to 2010. The resulting book, Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985-2010, will be released May 18 by NonStop Press.
Some of the novels selected by the pair likely will come as no surprise (China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station and Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, for example). Others, however, may be unknown to all but the most voracious genre readers (Pamela Sargent’s The Shore of Women and Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief) Others still, such as Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer-winning The Road, walk the narrow line between SF and literary or mainstream fiction.
We asked Broderick and DiFilippo to justify their choices — both the surprising and unsurprising ones — and tell us how they managed to narrow down the avalanche of SF released between 1985 and 2010 to a list of just 101 choices.
There’s no shortage of lists proclaiming to catalog the best and most important works of any number of genres. What sets this book apart?
DAMIEN: We kicked off from the 1985 classic, David Pringle’s Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, An English-Language Selection, 1949-1984. His subtitle was a sly reference to George Orwell’s great dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was published in 1949. Was Orwell writing science fiction or literature? Both, arguably. Other books in Pringle’s list were far more recognizably “generic”: Asimov’s The End of Eternity, Bester’s The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination, Clarke’s Childhood’s End and The City and the Stars. (To my amazement and delight, one of my own novels was included.) But Pringle didn’t stop with Orwell in noting the crossover between SF and mainstream writing: there’s Burroughs’ Nova Express, and Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and Kingsley Amis’s The Alteration and Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker. We decided to cast our net equally wide, snaring great representative novels written in English in the period following David’s closing year of 1984 when Gibson’s Neuromancer came out, and marked the emergence of a new kind of SF, cyberpunk.
Continue reading Made in S.A.: Damien Broderick and Paul DiFilippo run down the 101 best SF novels since 1985 »
By Scott A. Cupp, on May 1st, 2012 Forgotten Films: Déjà Vu (2006)
This is the 63rd in my series of Forgotten Obscure or Neglected Films
 This last week I was out of town from Sunday through Friday so it was only by chance that I got to see this film. I had gone to Tulsa for the funeral of my dear friend and big sister K. D. (Kathy) Wentworth who died from pneumonia as the result of cervical cancer at age 61. The news, which I was expecting, still nearly brought me to my knees. I attended the graveside service (thankfully very short) and then gave the eulogy, which I was honored to do and which made me not sleep at night, worrying that I might not say the right thing or say something wrong.
Anyway, I returned to Dallas and stayed with my friend Dwight because Sandi and I were originally going to be in Dallas on Thursday anyway because we were going to see the Beach Boys on their 50th anniversary tour. I saw the Beach Boys for the first time in 1969 and several times in between, but this time they had Brian Wilson touring with them. So I was in. It was a good show.
So, since Dwight and I had nothing going, he asked if I had ever seen DÉJÀ VU with Denzel Washington. The answer was No and I am not sure why. I do not recall when this movie was out, though according to IMDB it made a fair bit of money.
This is a decent time travel movie, mixing in terrorism as a part of the plot. A ferry boat in New Orleans is targeted on a holiday weekend and 500+ people are dead. Agent Doug Carlin (emphasis on the second syllable) is an ATF agent in New Orleans and he is reviewing the bombing scene where he impresses the FBI leads Paul Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer) and Jack McCready (Bruce Greenwood)). He is able to view a scene and weed out the unnecessary details to get to the pertinent data. Among the information he is concerned with is the body of a young woman found just before the blast who is suffering all the symptoms of having died there. Knowing she was dead before the blast, he is able to find the clues that show she was abducted and murdered. He visits her apartment and is puzzled by the note “U CAN SAVE HER” spelled out on her refrigerator. When he relates his findings he is invited to a secret facility where FBI agents and scientists are able to view exactly 4 days and 6 hours into the past. They have a narrow focus on where they can look but they can peer through walls and see odd things. They cannot go back further and if they miss a view, it is gone forever.
Continue reading Forgotten Films: Déjà Vu (2006) »
By Scott A. Cupp, on April 26th, 2012  FORGOTTEN BOOK: RGK: THE ART OF ROY G. KRENKEL, 2005
This is the 96th in my series of Forgotten Books.
I came to the art of Roy Krenkel rather late. I had seen the covers he did for Ace Books for Edgar Rice Burroughs’ titles but I did not equate them to any one artist. It was only when Donald M. Grant did his massive book THE SOWERS OF THE THUNDER and my friend Bill Wallace pre-ordered one that I saw what RGK was about. That volume of 4 Robert E. Howard stories was amazing with huge full color paintings and spot illustrations throughout the text. The pre-orders all came signed by Krenkel and I lusted after that book. I eventually got a copy from Grant (unsigned) and read it and loved it and stroked it and called it mine. It got away from me when I needed desperately to repair my car. I later acquired another copy which went away in the big book sale of 2007. I do not currently own a copy. I hope to change that someday.
Continue reading Forgotten Book: RGK: The Art of Roy Krenkel, 2005 »
By Scott A. Cupp, on April 24th, 2012 Forgotten Films: Queen of Outer Space (1958)
This is the 62nd in my series of Forgotten Obscure or Neglected Films
 Somehow over the years, I missed this movie. Mainly because, by the time it came around for me to see, everyone had already told me how bad it was. And starring Zsa Zsa Gabor, well that icing might have been bad fish paste. But, I always felt deprived. So when TCM had this on the other night, my DVR ran wild and I decided my viewing gap needed to be filled.
At first I was pleasantly surprised. The opening sequence was well formed, the colors were good, the music was decent and the production values seemed high. The script was by Charles Beaumont from a story by Ben Hecht, a pretty good pedigree overall.
Then, about 15 minutes into the film, we get the main titles and all the values go away. The things that go wrong from the launch onward are numerous. Three astronauts have been summoned to take a scientist up to the space station orbiting at 10,000 miles. Captain Patterson (Eric Fleming in the year before CURSE OF THE UNDEAD a pretty good weird western and his role as Gil Favor on RAWHIDE which would last from 1959 to 1965), Lieutenant Cruz (Dave Willocks) and Lieutenant Turner (Patrick Waltz) are disappointed because they are elite troops and this is a milk run. Professor Konrad (Paul Birch) was responsible for the construction of the space station and seems a likeable enough character. As they approach the pace station mysterious rays (looking suspiciously like animated drawings) pass through space, coming nearer and nearer to the space station. Finally they strike the station, blowing it up and creating huge turbulence for the rocket.
Continue reading Forgotten Films: Queen of Outer Space (1958) »
By Scott A. Cupp, on April 19th, 2012 FORGOTTEN BOOK: LOONEY TUNES AND MERRIE MELODIES, 1989
This is the 95th in my series of Forgotten Books.
OK, we have a reference book this time. But what a reference book! To quote the subtitle this is “A Complete Illustrated guide to the Warner Brothers Cartoons”. By my count, the book covers roughly 1,050 cartoons from 1930’s “Sinkin’ in the Bathtub” starring Bosko to 1988’s “Night of the Living Duck”.
 This is an evil book. Whenever I pick it up, hours vanish from my life. I start with something simple, say, “What’s Opera, Doc?” and then I am checking out Bugs Bunny items and looking for the ones never shown on TV anymore like “Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs” which is about an non-politically correct as you can get and still a wonderful cartoon.
Among the indexes there are listings alphabetically and also by series. I get lost reading about Pepe LePew (one of my heroes) who had 17 cartoons or Speedy Gonzales (47 cartoons). I look up the wonderful names and get lost in their descriptions. Where else could you find “Scent of the Matterhorn” and immediately get sucked in to reading about “Prince Violent” on the same page?
Continue reading FORGOTTEN BOOK: LOONEY TUNES AND MERRIE MELODIES, 1989 »
|
Mission Control
|
JOHN PICACIO is a World Fantasy Award-winning and Hugo
Award-nominated illustrator of science fiction, fantasy, and horror literature.
On
The Front |
|
SANFORD ALLEN is a musician and author with more than
two dozen horror and dark fantasy stories published.
Sanford Allen | Boxcar
Satan |
|
PAUL VAUGHN is a graphic artist,
web designer, writer, consultant and all around techno-geek.
The Mac
Guy | Dingus Design |
|
SCOTT A. CUPP is a writer whose work has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award.
Scott A. Cupp |
|
