A Storm of Swords- Book 1: Steel and Snow (2000) by George R. R. Martin

WARNING: Here be SPOILERS!!!!

So I've jumped well and truly on the Game of Thrones band-wagon. I can't even claim to be a true fan, as I started reading after watching the first episode.

 If I'm honest, I don't even watch the show anymore. I've seen the first season in its entirety, but that's it. I'm sticking pretty closely to the books, mainly because of my girlfriend, who is a frothing A Song of Ice and Fire fan, eagerly awaiting George R. R. Martin's (hereafter referred to as GRRM) next instalment. It's actually quite funny, I'll come to some shocking revelation in the book and discuss it with her, and she'll just scoff and tell me how far behind I am ("You know nothing, Jon Snow!").

What did I think of this, the first-half of the third book (that's a mouthful) in the series? Yeah, I enjoyed it. Quite a lot actually. I initially went in believing that GRRM was a really solid purveyor of what I term meat-and-potato prose (that is, prose with no real emphasis on the poetry of language), but there are a few parts in this book, a few little jokey flourishes that are surprisingly poetic on a comedic level.

When Tyrion awakes from his coma after the events in A Clash of Kings, he is greeted by the loveably ambiguous eunuch, Varys, who tells him how the Queen-Regent Cersei has stolen Tyrion's spies, the Kettlebacks. The following exchange occurs:

"The Kettlebacks report frequently to your sweet sister." "When I think of how much coin I paid those wretched... do you think there's any chance that more gold might win them away from Cersei?" "There is always a chance, but I should not care to wager on the likelihood. They are knights now, all three, and your sister has promised them further advancement." A wicked little titter burst from the eunuch's lips. "And the eldest, Ser Osmund of the Kingsguard, dreams of certain...other...favors... as well. You can match the queen coin for coin, I have no doubt, but she has a second purse that is quite inexhaustible."

The double entendres are deliciously funny and you get a few of them in Steel and Snow.

I've often described A Song of Ice and Fire as a kind of R rated Lord of the Rings, and I stand by it. I love this series, I love how unconventionally bleak it is.

 Magic, in the world of Westeros (and beyond) is a dark and almost unheard of affair. When it does crop up, it's treated as if it's completely mundane by the characters, and even though the dragons are sought after, they are pursued with a greed and lack of wonder that only adult human beings can possess. When men try to buy Daenery's dragons on her journey, they do so the way you can imagine certain affluent men pursuing sex slaves; not with an appreciation or wonder at beauty, but with a cold and calculating need to dominate everything unique and beautiful about the world.

I've also maintained that A Song of Ice and Fire is a actually a study in the pursuit of political power, and how the laws dreamed up by men, even those claiming to be of divine origin, are fickle in comparison in the face of brute power and violence.

The Unsullied, an army of robot-like, disciplined, soldiers, trained since birth (not unlike the Spartans) is a pretty cool idea, as well. Each member of the The Unsullied are given a puppy dog at birth and they have to kill it when they come of age, in a sickeningly brutal rite of passage.

I enjoyed this book, but I also feel that I can't really give an adequate review of it in isolation. Maybe when the whole series is done, I'll do a massive review of it. Until then, I thoroughly recommend A Song of Ice and Fire-- not that you probably need my recommendation to know its brilliance, not at this point in time.

Movie Showdown 4: The Internship (2013) vs. The World's End (2013)

Big fan of both Shaun of the Dead and The Wedding Crashers, so this movie showdown is sure to be interesting indeed. In The World's End (2013), Simon Pegg and co. play characters who are returning to the town that they grew up in order to finish a pub crawl that they didn't complete back in their high-school days, only to find that it has been taken over by robots. In The Internship (2013), Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson play two computer illiterate and out-of-work salesmen who apply for Google's internship program. Both are comedies, though one does have some horror elements to it. Which will be the victor?

The World's End (2013)

This viewer saw Shaun of the Dead at the movies way back in 2004 as a teenager (God, I'm that old, am I?), and was really quite impressed. The same viewer, a few years later, saw Hot Fuzz at the movies and enjoyed it, but didn't think it was anywhere near the same caliber as its zombie-comedy predecessor. I'm afraid to say that I didn't like The World's End at all. It was kind of a massive mess of a movie, and the fact that it has received all this critical praise is actually kind of baffling.

It starts out promisingly enough, and there is some potentially interesting character development in the beginning-- primarily concerning Pegg's washed-up, alcoholic protagonist, but it all just fizzles out in the long run, and this is mainly due to the complete lack of regard for logic in the screenplay.

An example, you ask? Well when the heroes discover that the town has been taken over by hostile robots, their answer to the problem is to keep drinking, to keep on pursuing the golden mile. Come on, that's the stupidest, most illogical thing ever! Also, for some reason, five extremely British, extremely middle-class desk jockeys are also competent martial artists? Give me a break.

There are a few effective concepts  at play here: the way light beams out of the robots' head is pretty creepy, and some of the dialogue works (though not enough by a long-shot). However, the robots and their motives and modus operandi are not properly explained, and the apocalyptic ending is shabbily tacked on and supremely glib.

The Internship (2013)

I'd heard that this film sucked, so I didn't go see it at the movies. I'm a huge fan of Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, and I think The Wedding Crashers just might be one of the funniest movies I've seen ("You've heard the saying that we only use ten percent of our brains? Well I like to think we only use ten percent of our hearts.") I did manage to catch The Internship on bluray, however, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.

Sure it's not the most innovative or even original screenplay, and you can probably detect elements of its three-act structure from space, but The Internship is a genuinely heart-felt consideration of some universal themes. Themes like social isolationism and finding and utilising our inner strengths -- it's all there and it's dealt with in a way that is refreshingly optimistic and funny. Many critics are labelling it as a prolonged advertisement for Google-- and it most certainly is-- but it's also incredibly funny.

Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn shine in this, and part of the appeal is watching the two social butterflies navigate a technological world populated by socially awkward computer geeks. You throw in a dash of computer illiteracy on behalf of Wilson and Vaughn, and you've got a recipe for some great scenes. One, involving Vaughn explaining his idea for an app (that is basically Instagram) is particularly hilarious.

Owen Wilson also gets his fair share of the laughs as well, with his Southern American and utterly optimistic charm-in-the-face-of-adversity sure to melt even the most cynical of hearts (he says to the film's antagonist, a ruthless twenty-something he is competing against: "There's always gonna be a joker who wants to play fuck-around. I guess that's going to be you, man. Okay. At least we know.") I found it all pretty hard to resist.

You should go and see:

The Internship

It was a surprisingly good movie, and when the competition is disturbingly unthoughtful swill like The World's End, it's really no choice at all.

Mr. Skittles (Now Available!)

My first short-story is now available for Kindle via the Kindle store. I originally intended to make it free to view, but apparently you can't do that, so I'm charging the bare minimum (0.99c).

For less than a dollar, you can experience Mr. Skittles, a horror short-story that is a ghost-story with a bit of a twist in its tail.

The Amazon synopsis:

Lily can't sleep.
During recess, her friend Ethan told her the story of Mr. Skittles, an ice-cream man who was drowned in the lake, who comes out every once and a while to drag kids down to the murky bottom.
Although she knows that the story couldn't possibly be true-- that Mr. Skittles couldn't possibly exist-- she still lays awake at night, unable to get to sleep. And when she hears something sliding open her window, when her curtain begins to flap in the night breeze that is now able to enter her room, she comes face to face with true and utter horror.

Please buy my story. If you are a premium member, you can borrow it for free.

Thanks guys,

- A. 

Movie Showdown #3: Rosemary's Baby (1968) vs. Prince of Darkness (1987)

In honour of, and sadly not in time for, Halloween 2013, this Movie Showdown pits two pre-apocalyptic, religious horror films against in each other.

In one corner we have the iconic and much loved Roman Polanski suspense movie, Rosemary's Baby-- in which Mia Farrow goes through one heck of a hellish pregnancy (see what I did there? Because she's pregnant with the antichrist). In the other we have a surprisingly philosophical consideration of the old 'science vs. faith' argument and lots of cool 80s special effects in the haunting Prince of Darkness by the master of cool genre cinema, John Carpenter.

Which should you see? Read on, friends of the night.

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

When you're a full-blown horror fan, it becomes hard to be genuinely frightened by things. That's because horror fans have seen it all. We've been terrified by the soulless, knife-wielding maniac Michael Myers. We've dreamed of Freddy Kruger with his finger-knives. And we've spend hours pondering just what the hell happened to the kids at the end of the The Blair Witch Project.

Imagine my delight when I discovered Rosemary's Baby by Roman Polanski. Sure I had heard of it before. In-fact, I remember picking up a VHS copy of it in a video rental store as a teenager (yes, I am that old) and looking at Mia Farrow holding a butcher's knife and thinking, "No, this is too scary for me." I bought it on DVD the other day on sale at K-Mart and it scared the living shit out of me...And I'm not even religious!

Polanski masters the slow build here. Things begin normally, with Mia Farrow and her husband moving into a new apartment in New York. After a horrifying dream sequence (art-house style with scattered and horrifying images) in which she is raped by a demonic figure, things start to quickly deteriorate.

Now, I'm not even a believer and I was scared. You sort of get attached to Farrow's Rosemary. This is primarily because Farrow brings a vulnerable pixie innocence to the role. By the end, it's not entirely clear whether she's going through some kind of post-partum psychosis, or whether the devil is a very real threat to our beloved protagonist.

And the ending! Oh my. It's just something you have to watch and see for yourself. Suffice to say that Polanski nails it in such a weird and wonderful way. All the suspense pays off and you leave the movie with this gnawing sense of hopeless dread that just sticks with you.

Prince of Darkness (1987)

Watched this one last night with an 80s movie buff mate of mine, and really enjoyed it. The impression I get of John Carpenter is that he's this cool skinny guy who smokes a lot of pot and spends a lot of time reading stuff by Carlos Castaneda.

Prince of Darkness is filled with metaphysical questioning, and includes an old Asian physics professor spouting off stuff like: "Reality, as we know it, completely breaks down on the subatomic level. Prepare to enter into a world where the rules of classic reality doesn't apply."

If you're not a fan of philosophical rambling (I most certainly am), don't be deterred though, because at its core, Prince of Darkness is a tremendous horror film about demonic possession. A team of scientists and religious scholars are sent to study a strange artefact discovered in the bowels of a church. The artefact is eventually discovered to be the tomb of Satan himself, and manages to possess each scholar one-by-one.

The greatest thing about this movie is the use of 80s special effects. If you're a kid of the 90s, who grew up watching movies you weren't allowed to watch from the 80s (movies your parents said were just too scary/violent/sexual for you), you're sure to love Prince of Darkness (if you haven't seen it already). There are cool possessed people prosthetics, including one that is particularly haunting near the end of the film. There is a large John Coffey-esque black man who whimpers nervously as he cuts his own throat with a jagged piece of wood.

Also, look out for a cameo from Alice Cooper, who is fucking terrifying as a murderous hobo.

So, which movie should you see?

Rosemary's Baby

Even though I thoroughly enjoyed Prince of Darkness, it's just impossible to overlook Rosemary's Baby as a horror film and as a work of pure suspense. It just really stayed with me, and the ending is an example of a perfect ending for a horror movie for me. One that is utterly hopeless, and utterly horrifying.

Enjoy it if you haven't already.