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 [Read it all...]]]> 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.

People keep asking for the signs. He doesn’t know what signs they want and puts it down to eccentric Englishness. Then the Rider (David Eccleston) shows up and begins to threaten him and his family. Finally Miss Greythorne has her “servant’ Merriman Lyon (Ian McShane) tell him that as the seventh son of a seventh son, Will is destined to help the immortals of the Light keep the forces of the Dark at bay. There are signs (or relics) hidden throughout Time and he is the only one who can retrieve them. There are six signs and if they are not found, the Dark will be able to gain the power necessary to bring about an apocalypse.

Will does point out that since he has only five brothers; he is not the seventh son. He is then told the family secret – that he was a twin and his brother mysteriously disappeared long ago. No one ever thought to tell him this, especially not his father who had been researching the legends of the Light and the Dark when it occurred.

I do not remember much of the book since it has been 35 or so years since I read it but I know that I really liked all five books and that they deserved better than this type of treatment. It is not a bad film, but it also is not a good one. Your mileage may vary. I may have to reacquire the books; they went away in the Great Book Sale of 2007. I had all five in hardcover with THE GRAY KING signed by Susan Cooper. They may become a Forgotten Book at some point. Meanwhile, find something really worthwhile to watch, just not this one or last week’s THE GREEN SLIME.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

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 [Read it all...]]]> 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.

This is not a jaw dropping debut, like A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ or THE DEMOLISHED MAN. It is a clever well written science fiction mystery title, though. The story primarily takes place in a simulated Rome, created by HabiTek as a Live Action Role Playing game, accumulating experience points and wealth to try and become Emperor, then to remain Emperor. Arvid Kerickson is one of the two primary programmers for the game. He is contacted by the other programmer Wilson and told that things are going wrong in the game. Gods are performing improbable acts, fires are starting and there has been a murder. A real murder with a dead player, which is going to cause HabiTek some grief, especially when it is noted that the dead man is Micio Julius Metullus, current Emperor of Rome and the man married to Arvid’s ex-wife Demea, which makes him a prime suspect. This suspect status is upped when Wilson is found murdered also with Arvid’s dagger in his back.

Arvid assumes the identity of a gladiatorial trainee named Gaius and begins trying to find out what is causing all the problems. His ex seems to be into stuff way over her head. She is a vengeful person and when she achieves Godhood by becoming Proserpina and Queen of the Underworld, she wants revenge on Arvid and on her step-daughter Amaelia who finds herself going from Vestal Virgin to slave to possible Empress to dead girl to Underworld escapee all in a couple of days.

The book is a lot of fun, especially when the Gods are around. These are programmed deities who begin to exceed their parameters and run a little rampant. Mars really wants to bring a war to the city and have a live human sacrifice.

All in all, this is a very fun book. And it foretold the things to come. The two Moonspeaker books are also well worth your time to track down. None of these titles is particularly expensive and they do seem to be around. Scott says “Check them out!”

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

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 [Read it all...]]]> 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).

The cast tries to give it a go. Robert Horton (WAGON TRAIN) stars as Commander Jack Rankin, hero to millions of women everywhere and all around prick. He is assisted by Richard Jaekel (THE DIRTY DOZEN) as Commander Vince Elliott. These two were once great friends until a woman came between them and Elliott made a decision that Rankin found inexcusable. Of course, the woman Dr. Lisa Benson (Luciana Paluzzi, the luscious red headed villain in Thunderball) is on Space Station Gamma from which the asteroid destruction launch plan team will. Dr. Benson rarely wears medical clothing but is quite fine in her miniskirts which appear to be within the space station dress code.

The monsters are one eyed, multi-armed fugitives from YO GABBA HEY which feed off of power and are therefore virtually indestructible. And the plot holes and errors abound. As in QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE, spaceships are spacious and have no airlocks. Decontamination take as about 10 minutes (even though it was to be run multiple times) and does not notice the alien slime. An asteroid with no atmosphere has water on it. Rockets leave smoke trails in space. The biologist Dr. Halvorsen (Ted Gunther) ignores all protocols to try and bring back an alien life form. And more.

So, a decent idea is ruined with a bad script, bad direction and no production values. I could have waited another 42 years and been ahead. Though I did love watching Luciana. Always a good thing to do.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

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 [Read it all...]]]> 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.

And there is the girl Gwuiwenneth who comes from within the wood. Both Christian and Steven love her, each in their own way and each wants her so much they would die. She comes and goes, she stays and learns and listens and laughs. Then she is taken away and must be found.

There are many wonderful aspects of this book. The legends told describing the various mythagos are among them. I have no doubt that doctoral dissertations are waiting within those wooded areas. Sometimes you can almost recognize the root basis for the old legends. The wood is no respecter of ages, vast periods of time mix chaotically within its confines. And the wood is Tardis-like, bigger on the inside than outside. It protects itself from intruders making them walk in circles of unknown disorientation.

The prose is sparkling; the action (when it occurs) is vivid. There is much internalization as Steven must discover who the wood is and how to work with it and through it. This is a beautiful book full of the poetry of the English language. Wonderful and rewarding, it is nearly perfect. And you should read it.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

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. [Read it all...]]]> 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.

Then the bad things begin to happen. Zinthrop is attacked by the cat he has regressed and soon finds himself hit by a car as he wanders in a daze. Janice begins self medicating at higher dosages than prescribed. Mr. Cooper (William Roerick), a chemist with the firm (I think) begins investigating along with Bill Lane and Mary Dennison (a PR guy and a secretary played by Anthony Eisley and Barboura Morris, respectively). Mary is able to secure a letter from Zinthrop to Janice describing his process. Cooper is killed by a woman with wasp-like qualities, though she bites him vampire style. Everyone watching knows who this mystery woman is. Eventually there is a confrontation with Mary placed in danger and the loss of formula, boss and company.

Typical Roger Corman fare, innovative, yet made for a dime (with spare change). He produced and directed this one from a script by Hollywood heavy Leo Gordon, whose wife Lynn Cartwright provided some great comic relief in the film as Maureen a wisecracking nail filing secretary.

All in all, it was fun and worth the little more than an hour I put into it. Maybe someday soon I will get around to discussing INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS, written by Nicholas Meyer who gave us THE SEVEN PERCENT SOULTION novel and who directed STAR TREK: THE WRATH OF KHAN.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

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 [Read it all...]]]>

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.

Why do the years 1985-2010 bear exploring? How does that period stack up against other eras of SF in terms on the ambition and quality of work produced?

DAMIEN: In those 26 years, it’s arguable that more mature science fiction was published than in all the preceding century. It isn’t as utterly groundbreaking as the work of the 1940s and 1950s, when most of the iconography of SF as a form of imaginative creation gelled, but the skill and depth of the genre are now so enriched that almost every new writer starts at a higher level of competence than was ever achieved by most of the classic Golden Age writers. Even though fat fantasy trilogies and sparkly vampires and shambling zombies have overwhelmed the market, this last quarter century is still the true Golden Age of SF.

There’s been much debate about what science fiction is and isn’t. Margaret Atwood, for example, maintains that The Handmaid’s Tale — one of your choices for this list – is not an SF novel. What’s more, a handful of novels on your list have more often been categorized as fantasy than SF. How did you determine where to draw the line when it came to what is and isn’t an SF novel?

DAMIEN: We’ve chosen novels that in a 101 different ways are as wily and inventive as the best speculative writing and as well-wrought and insightful into the nature of human consciousness and society as anything by, well, Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing or Philip Roth or Margaret Atwood or Michael Chabon or Cormac McCarthy—some of whom, marvelously, are here as well, with their own distinctive contributions to the canon of recent speculative fiction. As we say in the Introduction, “What we can promise you is that the novels we discuss are among the most significant works of science fiction from the last quarter century, books that reward careful reading while providing pleasure, amusement, novelty, wonderment.” As for Atwood, we note: “it’s no accident that, as well as being shortlisted for the mainstream Booker Prize, [The Handmaid’s Tale] won the Arthur C. Clarke, Locus, and James Tiptree, Jr. Awards for best SF novel, while selling more than a million copies to readers who always supposed they disliked SF.”

As you examined SF novels of this era, what themes emerged? Why do you think these themes have been so prevalent? 

PAUL: In a way, as Damien alluded to earlier, these novels of the past two-point-six decades have used pre-established tropes and tools that the great SF pioneers created to deal with recent technological and cultural changes that were both more and less dramatic and deracinating than what came in the first half of the twentieth century. Many social commentators have remarked that the advances from 1900-1960 were so radical—air travel, global highway systems, antibiotics, radio, television, etc—that they put the advances of 1960-2010—computers, internet, nascent genetic engineering—in the shade. Consequently, the SF of our period—dealing as good SF does with the zeitgeist—was less widescreen baroque, to use Aldiss’s term, than what came before it. Late-period Gibson is more low-key than Bester, that’s for sure! On the other hand, the bubbling-under revolutions (all the stuff trending toward the Singularity) as well as some truly unprecedented social-media technology, do presage enormous changes in what it means to be human. So, long story short, I’d say the dominant theme of much of this SF is “What does it mean to be human?” Now, this has been a longstanding concern of SF since the genre began. But I find it dominant above many other motifs at the moment.

Looking over the list, I see books by a Japanese-born author (Kazuo Ishiguro), a Russian-born author (Ekaterina Sedia), a Finnish author (Hannu Rajaniemi) and a South African writer (Lauren Beukes). Is one of the most notable things about the ’85-’10 era of SF its more global nature? 

PAUL: It truly is a smallish, more interconnected world these days than ever before. Butterfly Twitter flutterings in one part of the globe almost instantly translate to hurricanes in the ideosphere at the antipodes. Therefore, any reader with his or her radar turned on is currently realizing that voices from around the planet must funnel into the speculative conversation. I think this attitude derives in large part from cyberpunk’s avowed mission to channel a multinational perspective on the future. In my opinion, cyberpunk has never been given quite enough credit for nurturing that shift in the parochial stance of SF. Of course, what’s interesting is not for the American/Anglo SF voice to be precisely replicated, but for it to be mutated and then fed back into the “mainstream” of SF to enhance our visions. We should also note the presence of savvy expatriates, such as Richard Calder, who spent many years in Southeast Asia and came away with some unique stylings and insights. SF has always benefitted from such explorers, such as Cordwainer Smith and James Tiptree.

Are there some works on this list that are relatively obscure but deserve more attention? What are they and why should readers seek them out?

PAUL: I think that our more “mainstream” selections, such as Michel Faber’s Under the Skin or Liz Jensen’s My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time, are too little known by genre readers, who would really appreciate them and get a kick from their handling of unique speculative elements. Maybe this book will help promote that kind of détente. Within our genre selections, we definitely have a few titles that have not received their due accolades. Carol Emshwiller, for instance, should have her SFWA Grandmaster Award by now. Maybe at the back of our minds in composing this book was the rule that if we faced a choice between, say, a great John Scalzi novel and an equally great Carol Emshwiller novel, we’d go with the Emshwiller because Scalzi had had his share of the spotlight already.

What’s likely to be the most controversial choice on the list? Why? 

DAMIEN: Some readers might doubt that Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is really SF; after all, there’s no explanation for his global catastrophe. Others might quibble at J. G. Ballard’s Super-Cannes or Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. But we have our reasons, and we’re happy to entertain controversy.

PAUL: The most controversial choice on the list is going to be whatever book any random reader considers the weakest, and yet which managed to edge out his or her own favorite!

As you compiled your list, were there works beloved by fans and critics that simply didn’t stand the test of time? 

PAUL: That stage of triage occurred so far back in the process, I’ve kinda forgotten how it worked! But basically, we started with such a massive list of super-great books that we had to mercilessly winnow down, that we never even brought up the second-tier stuff.

During the collaboration, did the two of you have any major differences on work that should or shouldn’t have been included? How did you iron those out? 

DAMIEN: Even with 101 choices, there’s such a tremendous amount of great stuff available that we had no trouble at all reaching a consensus, even though our tastes are inevitably somewhat different. And that adds flavor and richness to the stew!

PAUL: I did have to talk Damien out of making the book be 100% Aussie authors, but aside from that—!

DAMIEN: You do know he’s kidding, right? Obvious it couldn’t be more than 74% Aussie…

Based on the evolution in SF we saw during this era, what do you see as the probable trends in SF writing over the next 26 years?

DAMIEN: It might merge into the great ocean of story, as seems to be happening with the movies. It never ceases to astonish me that so many people who scoffed at SF for years contentedly watch SF films and TV shows without even noticing the genre cooties. On the other hand, mass media SF (or “sci fi”) is almost always watered down. It takes devotion to get the best out of complex SF novels, which have built their special vernacular during the last century or more. Still, people are absorbing those narrative moves just because the future we move through is literally an SF landscape. Even as the unexpected dimensions of this real future reshape and enrich the stories we tell about the futures yet to come…

PAUL: I don’t think SF can ever afford to feature a predominance of novels such as The Quantum Thief. Great as that book is—as attested to by our inclusion of it, ha!—it is a work that requires an intense familiarity with 75 years of past SF and the multiplex parsing protocols of the genre in order to be fully appreciated. We need to feature SF that walks the tightrope between simplicity and multiplexity, between newness and canon-referentiality, between adventure and deep thinking. It’s a hard row to hoe, to write something that will please both newbies and old pros, and which also advances the genre, but I think it can and must be done, if SF is to survive and even broaden its appeal.

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 [Read it all...]]]> 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.

It is an odd enough premise and through their viewings he finds himself falling in love with the dead girl. He wants to save her and the people on the ferry. But, this cannot be done, or so the scientists tell him. He does not believe and wants to make things happen. He wants to send a note to himself to check on things that might prevent the disaster.

I am not going to spoil all the plot devices here. There are some time paradox discussions and some plot holes you could drive the ferry through. But for the most part, the film is good, fun and reasonably suspenseful. Jim Caviezel is good as the bomber and Paula Patton does well as the dead girl.

Not the greatest film I have ever seen but I enjoyed it well enough to recommend it to you if you have not seen it.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

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. [Read it all...]]]> 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.

This book contains numerous pictures, color and black and white as well as studies, cover roughs, and influences on RGK’s work. And it has essays. Essays from contemporaries/co-workers like Al Williamson (talking about the EC comic days when RGK helped out Williamson along with Frazetta and Angelo Torres). Richard Lupoff discusses RGK’s work for him at Canaveral Press doing illustrations for Burroughs again and about RGK providing some art for his fanzine XERO. Don Grant discussed THE SOWERS OF THE THUNDER and THE ROAD TO AZRAEL which also featured RGK illustrations. Angelo Torres writes about RGK and the EC days also. William Stout examines RGK and Burroughs. Frank Frazetta discusses how RGK got into paperback cover art and got so much work he brought his friend Frank in to assist. Up to that point Frank had never really thought of paperback cover art. We are all glad he did and RGK is to blame.

But what you want is the pictures and there are lots of them. The book is printed on high quality slick paper and every page has one or more illustrations. The text is good, but, my, the art!

Copies are available online. When I went to check them out this morning, my eyes bugged out. Copies of this title on eBay were more than $200. There were 4 copies at ABE – ranging from $40 (for a remaindered copy) to over $300. One limited hardcover was $500. One regular hardcover at eBay was only $100. Go figure. The book was $25 new in 2005, but apparently RGK is not as forgotten as I though.

Check out the book or, better yet, find his work and bask in it.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

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 [Read it all...]]]> 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.

The ship is thrown into a rapid acceleration and the astronauts all black out. They finally awaken when the rocket crash lands on a planet. Their speed indicator has broken and they have no idea how long they were unconscious. They find themselves on a surprisingly earth-like planet with a breathable atmosphere (which is good because there does not appear to be an airlock on the spaceship. Professor Konrad deduces from the gravity and breathable air that they must be on Venus. I am not sure how he deduces this since Venus is covered with clouds and is much hotter and has a (probably) unbreatheable atmosphere. But, that is his conclusion and he is right.

Venus it seems is populated by beautiful women with a hostile attitude, good legs and a penchant for miniskirts. They speak English because they monitor our TV and radio broadcasts. Their queen Yllana (Laurie Mitchell) has exiled all the men and plans on destroying the Earth. She has a ray that destroyed the space station and is convinced the astronauts are spies and have invasion plans which they are merely refusing to reveal. Not all the women are crazy, though. Talleah (Zsa Zsa Gabor, who must have been listening to Hungarian American radio programs) is a scientist who, with a few trusted allies, is ready to overthrow the insane queen.

The show does not get any better than this. The girls are well worth watching, though Talleah and Yllana both wear long dresses and pants rather than the miniskirts all the other women wear. The plot gets truly ridiculous and the film is just plain bad. I wonder what the original script and story looked like before director Edward Bends got hold of it. Though he has some pretty decent credits to his name, too.

Whatever made it this way, do not go out of your way to try to see this one. The colors are good but that is about it. It can be good for some laughs if you have the right folks and a good frame of mind, otherwise everyone suffers.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

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 [Read it all...]]]> 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?

The book has numerous black and white illustrations. But beyond the descriptions, there is little else. Others have described the Termite Terrace in books about Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, Tex Avery, and Chuck Jones. But the descriptions are wonderful. Below is the entry for “What’s Opera, Doc?”

WHAT’S OPERA, DOC?
Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd: July 6 (1957); MM (Merrie Melody)
Directed by Chuck Jones; Story by Michel Maltese, Animation by Ken Harris, Richard Thompson, and Abe Levitow; Effect Animation by Harry Love; Layouts by Maurice Noble; Backgrounds by Phillip DeGuard; Film Editor Treg Brown; Voice Characterization by Mel Blanc: Musical Direction by Milt Franklyn. Song “Return My Love” Lyrics by Michael Maltese.

Wabbiterdamerung translated from the German, meaning “Twilight of the Wabbits.” Whereas Tristan was considered the ne-plus-ultra of Wagner, “What’s Opera, Doc?” expresses the apex of Jones at his most brilliant, the ribbing of Wagner’s Ring Cycle being secondary to the self parody of the elements of Bugs Bunny/Warner house style. Jones elaborates on the standard post- “A Wild Hare”: Elmer asks us to be “vewy quiet” as he’s hunting wabbits. He has a conversation with the nervy bunny before he realizes “that was the wabbit.” Bugs fools him twice, first by going in drag, then by pretending to be dead. The basic story line has been thoroughly dressed up visually with more angles/shots than any other cartoon, each scene with a beautifully realized arty layout, using clouds, lightning, etc. as stage props; and musically by adding ludicrously banal lyrics to the most majestic of Wagner’s leit-motifs. Also, “The Pilgrim’s Chorus” from Tannhauser becomes the pseudo Tin Pan Alley “Return My Love” duet. There is matching and mismatching of Wagner to Warners. Elmer is the hunter as the demigod Siegfried, Bugs in drag and long wig as the Valkyrie Brunnhilde atop an obese horse. Their ritualistic courtship climaxes in a pink-ish ballet as well as duet (sung beautifully by Blanc and Bryan). Elmer then slays Bugs with his “spear and magic helmet” and carries the carcass up to the burial pyre, as in the third act of Valkyrie. “Well, what did you expect in an opera? A happy ending?”

It just does not get any better than this. Copies seem to range heavily in price around the web. One copy was less than $5 while another was close to $50. Check it out if you love Warner Brothers cartoon. And check yourself out if you do not.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.