A Storm of Swords- Book 2: Blood and Gold by George R.R. Martin

SPOILERS!

(Major spoilers for those who only watch the TV show)

This is the installment that features the infamous Red Wedding sequence, which Martin handles really well with tense, taut prose:

"No one sang the words, but Catelyn knew 'The Rains of Castamere' when she heard it. Edwyn was hurrying towards a door. She hurried faster, driven by the music. Six quick strides and she caught him. And who are you, the proud lord said, that I must bow so law? She grabbed Edwyn by the arm to turn him and went cold all over when she felt the iron rings beneath his silken sleeve. Catelyn slapped him so hard she broke his lip. Olyvar, she thought, and Perwyn, Alesander, all absent. And Roslin wept... Edwyn Frey shoved her aside. The music drowned all other sound, echoing off the walls as if the stones themselves were playing. Robb gave Edwyn and angry look and moved to block his way... and staggered suddenly as a quarrel sprouted from his side, just beneath the shoulder."

This is really an abrupt style of prose from Martin, made more abrupt in the context of the sprawling chapters either side of it. You see, A Song of Ice and Fire achieves the majority of its tension not through violence, but through psycho-political maneuvering and the subsequent threat of violence. The events that led to the Red Wedding started in the first novel of this saga, and so this particular chapter is an unexpected and brutal climax. It makes for compelling reading, and Martin is utterly successful in achieving reader engagement.

What I also like about the series so far, is how historical realism is blended with magic. There are seven books in the series (as of writing), and each book is really an epic in its own right. For the majority of the novels, there is not much going on in the magic department (this ain't Hogwarts, folks), but then Martin will throw in some magic that is actually quite bat-shit insane. After the infamous Red Wedding sequence, in which two Starks are brutally slain, the concluding chapter of A Storm of Swords presents us with a newly resurrected Catelyn Stark who can't speak because her throat has been slit:

"Her cloak and collar hid the gash his brother's blade had made, but her face was even worse than he remembered. The flesh had gone pudding soft in the water and turned the color of curdled milk. Half her hair was gone and the rest had turned as white and brittle as a crone's. Beneath her ravaged scalp, her face was shredded skin and black blood where she had raked herself with her nails. But her eyes were the most terrible thing. Her eyes saw him, and they hated. 'She don't speak,' said the big man in the yellow cloak. 'You bloody bastards cut her throat too deep for that. But she remembers.' He turned to the dead woman and said, "What do you say, m'lady? Was he part of it?" Lady Cateyln's eyes never left him. She nodded."

 I mean talk about crazy! Where the hell did that idea even come from? You know what? I don't really care where it came from, because it's a work of genius. In the hands of a lesser writer, such insanity wouldn't fly, but because Martin writes with confidence and finesse, he manages to pull it off perfectly.

Movie Showdown #5: Shooter (2007) vs. From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

SPOILERS!

It is time for another movie showdown. This time we have Marky Mark with a high-powered sniper rifle in one corner, and George Clooney and a handful of pissed off Mexican vampires in the other. Which movie should you see? Well don't stress too much about making the decision, because I'm here to make the decision for you, like one of those helpful ladies in a jewellery store who just sort of roll their eyes, nod, and tell you which ring you should get your girl.

Shooter (2007)

At the beginning of Shooter, I couldn't help but feeling like I was watching a K-Mart Jason Bourne movie. The mid-to-late 00s was the era of the intellectual spy movie. The last instalment of the aforementioned Bourne saga was released, James Bond had done away with invisible cars, and villains with diamonds embedded in their face in exchange for gritty realism, and (some would say) poorly written dialogue (there, I said it!). So I was expecting Shooter to be filled with a few weighty moral conundrums, as well as some deep protag anxiety and existential angst.

In this respect, I was pleasantly surprised. Marky Mark has no business questioning the pointlessness of life, and he doesn't in Shooter. Instead he gets angry at corrupt political figures and shoots stuff (some strong anti-Republican stuff here). Shooter is a fun action movie to watch. It's not as outlandish as White House Down, but I suppose you could say it's going for the same sort of vibe-- the 'this is an action movie, and action movies are supposed to be fun!' vibe.

I would have liked a few more sniper sequences. There are only really two major ones in the movie, and the former is far too short. The final sequence (set in the snowy fields of Alaska(?)) is pretty cool, but I'm afraid it's a case of too little too late.

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

I've seen From Dusk Till Dawn multiple times. I watched it again last night and all I can say is Wow! What a fucking movie! If you haven't seen it and don't want things spoiled (trust me, this is the kind of movie that spoiler warnings were invented for), then turn back now.

The first half of this opens like a typical Quentin Tarantino gangster film (typical is not synonymous with boring-- I'd rather watch a 'typical' Tarantino movie than most other movies), and then it mutates into a genre vampire movie. This mutation is so insanely left-field that it puts many viewers off. The mate I watched it with commented that he was really into the film for the first half, but the second half lost him. This is a problem that I'm guessing a lot of people have. However, if you're the type of person that digs genre cinema, and likes the idea of writers/directors experimenting with genre, then you really have to watch From Dusk Till Dawn.

Tarantino confirms his status as the absolute king of dialogue. The opening sequence presents us with one of the funniest, richest bit characters of cinema, Sheriff Earl McGraw, who is utterly offensive and utterly engaging. He drops pearlers like: "When you gonna learn that that microwave food will kill you faster than a bullet? I mean, them damn burritos ain't good for nothin' but a hippy-- when he's high on weed." His subsequent rant about allowing mentally disabled people work in fast-food restaurants is pure, highly offensive gold.

From Dusk Till Dawn culminates in a frenzy of vampire slaying that is packed with crazy characters. There's a Vietnam veteran who regales the main characters with stories of fighting Charlie in the jungle. There's also a leather-clad biker named Sex Machine who know his way around a whip. It's good fun, and it just oozes fucking cool.

You should see:

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

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.

Movie Showdown #2: The Dead Zone (1983) vs. Arachnophobia (1990)

The Dead Zone is one of those movies that I have been meaning to see for a while. I'd be going about my internet travels and would keep hearing about it, encountering the film's poster featuring young Christopher Walken's eyes staring frighteningly out into nothing, on movie websites and the like. It is, of course, based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, which I read in high-school, and the concept has always intrigued me.

On the other hand, I remember seeing Arachnophobia as a kid and being absolutely terrified of it. Mainly because the spiders that they used in the movie, whilst foreign to American audiences, are actually very common in Australia-- the dreadful huntsman that spins no web but moves with frightening speed.

So here goes nothing, round-two of the genre movie showdown.

The Dead Zone (1983):

David Cronenberg directed this so I was expecting quite a lot. His version of The Fly was horrifying and fun, and who could forget the head exploding scene in Scanners? It saddens me to say that The Dead Zone was actually pretty crappy. Cronenberg doesn't get to use much of his cool 80s special effects (save for a scene involving suicide via pair of barber scissors), and Walken is terribly miscast as American everyman, Johnny Smith.

About the only element worth sticking around for is Martin Sheen as the sociopathic Senatorial candidate, Greg Stillson. One scene, a psychic flash-forward (something Walken experiences whenever he touches someone), is particularly memorable. In it, Sheen (now President of the United States), forces the Secretary of Defence to help him launch nukes at Iran with the nuclear football. When the Vice President protests, telling everyone in the room that they don't need to resort to warfare but can find a diplomatic solution, Sheen says "It's too late, Mr. Vice President, the nukes are already flying. Hallelujah!", and it's a piece of maniacal brilliance that contrasts brilliants with Sheen's turn as the fatherly President Bartlett in The West Wing.

Also, I like the musical stings that shriek on the soundtrack whenever Walken has one of his psychic future visions.

Despite such positive traits, The Dead Zone was slow moving and moments in the movie's logic are actually quite silly if you think about them.

Arachnophobia (1990):

A lot of people may take umbrage with me saying this, but Arachnophobia is just about the perfect creature feature as far as I'm concerned. It could just be that I'm terrified of spiders and therefore the whole thing has a kinetic, anxious energy that only arachnophobes experience, but in the realm of subjectivity (where movie reviews live) that doesn't make it any less good, does it?

The best moments are when the spiders (all real for the most part-- this was before the days of CGI) creep into houses of the well-meaning country folk and hide in horrible places: a tub of buttery popcorn, inside a fluffy slipper, on top of a shower-head, etc. The fun is in not knowing when the spider will strike and there are many moments where you think it will, only to be denied. It's similar to the Paranormal Activity movies in that respect, you spend the whole movie waiting for the scare that doesn't come until the final act, and by that time you're so fraught with anxiety that the thought of having to turn off the light to go to sleep later on is unbearable.

There are also lots of clever scenes in Arachnophobia. At one point in the beginning of the movie, the big mean General spider gets picked up by a bird that flies off with it clasped in its claws. A long-shot shows the bird soaring across the country town, but when it reaches the middle of the frame, the bird stops and falls as if it has hit an invisible wall (or dome if you are so inclined), dead from spider bite.

And there is a line at the end of the film that is just hilarious. Jeff Daniels, having had a really bad time living out in the country, moves back to the city with his family and says something along the lines of how much he hates the country. This was back in the time when production companies weren't so worried about pissing off sections of the audience, and so instead of our city-boy protagonist learning the value of simple-living, we have him fleeing and essentially saying "Fuck the country, and fuck country folk! But most of all, fuck spiders!"

You should watch:

Arachnophobia.

Adventures in writing #1: Leaving Bag-End.

I've decided that if I'm going to take this writing thing seriously, I need to have a more active voice out in the cyber community. I need to talk about my writing, which I was hesitant to do because I'm an amateur and don't know what I could possibly have to say on the subject. So this post is me strapping on my back-pack, grabbing a long wooden walking staff and having one last seed cake before opening a door to a scary and exciting new world.

Expect more updates in this section of Genre Equality...Expect a lot more.

First off, I have successfully written two short-stories. The first one, titled Coming Around, is about a retired and almost elderly undercover cop whose pride leads to his disastrous downfall, which comes in the form of an encounter with someone from his undercover life, someone utterly unexpected.

 The second story is Mr. Skittles, which opens with a girl lying in her bed, terrified by a local urban legend floating around her schoolyard-- the sinister tale of Mr. Skittles, an ice-cream man who drowned in the lake, now back from the dead and hungry, hungry for little children. Although it has all the trappings of a ghostie story, the ending is something you might not expect.

Good prose is a psychic connection between composer and reader that transcends time and location. Writing is a muscle that needs to be worked-out if you ever expect to be any good. It seems embarrassing to admit this, but whilst writing Coming Around, I thought that I was punching out prose like the best of them (Dickens, King, Harris etc), but upon reading through it in the editing phase, I was shocked at just how clunky it was. My girlfriend's first comment upon reading it was 'It's good, but it just seems so...scripted...'

That's the thing about art, when you are engaging in creating it, it's so fresh in your mind, and you think that you're hot-shit, you think you are getting all your awesomely unique ideas down on the page.

 But, here's the thing, you don't ever record all of those good ideas-- shit you're lucky if you even get fifty percent. It's not until you let the idea fade out of your consciousness, let the core of it become but a distant memory, and then go back to what you have written, that you realise that maybe you're not in the same ballpark as King or Dickens, shit you're not even in the same continent!

Mr. Skittles is better written than Coming Around-- we humans are good at learning from mistakes-- and I'm actually pretty satisfied with the finished product. However, there are still little niggling things that I would love to change, little ticks of writing that I have since incorporated into my latest story, which I will only talk about when the first draft is finished.

Between writing, doing my last university assignments, teaching my last days of a practicum placement, and researching Autism Spectrum Disorder for a job that I really hope I might be able to get, I've also been reading a lot about the world of self-publishing through Amazon Kindle. I submitted Coming Around to an Australian horror magazine, Midnight Echo, and haven't heard back (and rightly so), and I'm thinking that self-publishing might be good way to go with fiction. I'm not convinced just yet, but I will keep you all informed.

Also, if you are a writer and you have had your work published (on a blog, on the kindle store, or otherwise), please let me know. I would love to read it, and I'll give you honest feedback. We writers have gotta stick together you know, I heard there are things much fouler than orcs out there.

- Adam.

Movie Showdown #1: Gravity vs. White House Down

Gravity vs. White House Down

   So I'm reading A Storm of Swords now and it's taking a bit longer than I anticipated. I've decided to create a new segment wherein I compare two genre movies that I have seen recently and declare a winner, just to give you guys something to read in the meantime. I saw Gravity in 3D with a friend of mine, and then we decided to sneak into the late session of White House Down, by the guy who made Independence Day. Not going to bother with plot synopses, you can use Wikipedia for that shiz. 

 Only one movie can walk away victorious, so here goes:

Gravity (2013)

   Australian film critic, David Stratton, called this the best science-fiction movie since 2001: A Space Odyssey. I don't know about that, but fuck me, Gravity was amazing.

 I got into a semi-argument with someone on Facebook over the merits of this movie, which started because I suggested to a person, who didn't like it, that they should have seen it in 3D. The reply was along the lines of 'If a movie needs 3D to be good, it's not a good movie', which sort of reeks of pretentiousness to me, but hey, it takes all kinds to run the world.

 The point I was trying to make is that Gravity is all about the spectacle. The visual effects are amazing-- it actually feels like you are in space. Sure there is some clunky dialogue, and critics are taking some supreme umbrage with the whole 'getting over loss' subplot (which isn't as bad as they make out), but you can't win them all, and I had a great time.

Gravity is a gorgeous and intense movie. The tension sort of grips you and just keeps on running for ninety minutes. 

 Oh and Bullock is actually kind of sublime in this. I'm not usually a fan, but in Gravity she has this amazing sort of presence that feels real when it needs to be and angelic when it needs to be. Clooney is good too, but I'm harbouring a little man-crush on him, so I think he's good in everything (especially movies that contain the words, 'From', 'Dusk', and 'Dawn', in the title).

White House Down (2013)

    This is the latest from Roland Emmerich who you can tell jizzes in his pants over Destruction Caught On Tape television shows. This really is a ridiculous movie, but it's one that is so ridiculous that it's fun. Expect gunfights, explosions and so-bad-its-good writing.

 One thing that really stands out is a motif of the saying 'The pen is mightier than the sword', whereby the nicotine gum chewing President (played by Jamie Foxx) believes that political change can be achieved by the pen, and the antagonist believes that power and violence (the sword) is actually the only thing that leads to significant change. The two engage in debate about this throughout the movie, and to give you an idea of just how ridiculous White House Down gets, at one point the President of the United States stabs the antagonist with a pen whilst shouting "I choose the pen!" I'm not sure whether Emmerich realises the irony in this statement and is playfully satirising the American action-movie, or whether it's supposed to be genuine, but it's all part of the charm.

 White House Down is American action-movie crap, but it's entertaining and it's rather conventionally shot (no shaky cam or quick zooms), which is refreshing.

You Should Go And See...

Gravity.

   Gravity is the hands-down winner here. There is just no way you can beat the visual effects in this film, or the unbelievable tension created by such a simple idea, magnificently executed.

            

Doctor Sleep

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

     I've read two books by Stephen King that have genuinely frightened me. Pet Semetary was one ("sometimes dead is bettah"), and The Shining is the other. Imagine my delight when, after two decidedly un-horrific novels, Under the Dome and 11/22/64, King announced Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining and a self-proclaimed return to 'balls-to-the-wall horror'.

     When he was a much younger man, King's prose was tight and filled with two things that made him hot literary shit: bubbling suspense and a unique voice that set him apart from the Grishams and the Koontzs. He was the master of the slow build. Characters meticulously constructed over hundreds of pages, were dumped into utterly horrific situations and the results were immensely satisfying. There’s an episode of Friends where Rachel has to sleep with her copy of The Shining in the freezer because it’s just too terrifying to keep on her bedside table.

One night, in the middle of Pet Sematary, I was dropping my girlfriend off at her house and my headlights illuminated a strange cat, eyes-a-glow, on her fence rail. I audibly gasped, much to my girlfriend’s amusement. At his best, King has a way of sinking under your skin and gently prodding you with long skeletal fingers.

     A lot of critics say that he has lost his edge, and it really does pain me to have to agree with them. Doctor Sleep is no way near the same calibre as The Shining. I suspect that King, like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, has softened with age. He no longer seems to believe in ending on a down-note. Doctor Sleep is no exception, though the upbeat ending works quite well this time (compared to Under the Dome whereby the mysterious dome was lifted by some simple begging on behalf of the protagonist).

     Okay, I’ve ranted enough about the supposed decline of King’s career. It’s time to get into the meat of Doctor Sleep. The beginning is very good. An opening bathroom scene is particularly terrifying: 
  

The woman from Room 217 was there, as he had known she would be. She was sitting naked on the toilet with her legs spread and her pallid thighs bulging. Her greenish breasts hung down like deflated balloons. The patch of hair below her stomach was gray. Her eyes were also gray, like steel mirrors. She saw him, and her lips stretched back in a grin.

     
        The middle slows right down and actually becomes tedious. There were a lot of chummy, average-American ‘jinkies-how-are-we-gonna-solve-this-mystery?’ scenes that sort of made me cringe to read. The only exception being a particularly moving scene where Dan Torrance tenderly aids an elderly nursing-home patient in dying.

     The ending was actually really good. Very, very, good, in-fact. I won’t give anything away, except to say that it’s quite dramatic, quite moving and shows a maturity on the subject of alcoholism that only a legitimate alcoholic could really muster with any authenticity. This pushes Doctor Sleep into literature territory, and genuinely so. I recommend reading this book, just don’t go in with ‘shining’ expectations. 

A note on Breaking Bad

A few disclaimers:

1. Here be SPOILERS

and

2. Looooooonnnnnnggggggg post. Too long if you ask me. If you get bored and distracted by a 'Justin Beiber doing shitty things to the people who made him famous' video, I wouldn't blame you.

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    This blog is primarily concerned with prose genre fiction, but occasionally (and hopefully rarely), I may feel the need to comment on genre fiction in other mediums. Breaking Bad is a classic example of the kind of genre fiction that gets this writer's heart a-racin' (or a-ricin, as it were).

     A Western first and foremost that oozes blood and violence, but also drips with clever dialogue and general badassery ("I am the one who knocks!"), Breaking Bad also has something to say about the human condition and that shadowy, strangely malleable, but universal part of it, morality. The reader (or viewer in this case) was presented with several significant questions along Walt's journey. Is Walt a sympathetic character or a villain? Can he be redeemed for his actions? Is his death necessary for such redemption?

     Not even a week ago, we were presented with Breaking Bad's coup de grace in the form of the anagramily titled episode Felina. An episode that many shivered to watch, both in anticipation for much needed closure to a half-decade long narrative, and in dread that such a staple in the 'good television' diet was going to disappear forever. Forget a movie version, or a reunion show-- Vince Gilligan explicitly stated in several interviews that Breaking Bad, unlike countless other television shows, was a closed story.

     I have conflicted thoughts on the finale. My initial reaction to it was disappointment. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be some literary hipster, proudly proclaiming that I was into Breaking Bad before it was cool (I wasn't). Nor are my views set in concrete. I'm sure that my opinion of the finale could potentially (and almost certainly will) change on a repeat viewing.

     The first issue I had related to closure. Again, don't get me wrong, closure was achieved between most of the characters for me (though at times it felt a little rushed). Walt and Skyler? There was a tenderness and finality to their last meeting that was gut-wrenchingly satisfying ("I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really-- I was alive.")   Walt and Jesse? I would have liked a bit more, but ultimately we get the sense that things have been righted between these two.

     But Walt and Walt Jr? Oh dear! Don't you feel like you need more on this? I mean what we get is Walt watching his son come home from school through a glass window. That's it. Will Walt Jr. ever forgive his father? Does he know how much his father loves him? I just don't feel like I know at this point, and I also feel that I deserve an answer, damn-it! I feel like there could have been one more episode dealing with the aftermath of the whole shebang.

     My next issue is with Walt's redemption. A recurring motif throughout fiction (to the point where it is almost an honest to goodness cliche) is that anti-heroes can only achieve redemption if they die. I'm reminded of a scene in The Cider House Rules where the father of a young woman, who just happens to be continually raping her, achieves redemption for his actions by sincerely apologising and then promptly dying. When this character apologised during the movie, I thought to myself 'That's all well and good, pops, but you're an incestual rapist! You're not gonna get out of this alive.'

     I felt the same way about Walter White. He confessed the truth to Skyler, and by doing so, achieved a satisfying level of self-realisation. He even blew Todd's Nazi Uncle's head-off at the mere mention of the missing millions in cash. Walt has realised the error of his ways, but he has committed too many sins, he has shed too much blood, and, as a result, he still has to die. It was an unwritten contract that formed around the time he let Jane choke on her own vomit, or maybe the time he poisoned Brock.

     I'm not in the habit of justifying wrongful deeds. What I will suggest though is that it could very well be possible for a human being-- who has done terrible things-- to achieve redemption without dying. I'd like to see this explored in genre fiction at some point.

     Of course, I can't really complain too much. There are too many complainers out there-- people who decry artists for perceived disappointment despite not contributing artistically to anything themselves. It's my sincere belief that unless you're willing to put your own work up there for the world to see, you should probably shut-the-fuck-up about the work of other people.    

     Breaking Bad was one hell of a ride. It should be praised because it achieved one thing above all else. It got regular people (people who-- god love them-- don't know the difference between the terms literacy and literature), talking about morality. I've actually had conversations with the most unlikely of people about whether or not Walter White is evil or a victim of unfortunate and tragic circumstance. Such conversations between regular people and those that spent too much time and money on a liberal arts education are a good thing. A profoundly good thing, indeed.