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Author: Bryant

Ray toothing

Robin McKinley’s Sunshine is much like a Laurell Hamilton book, except that it’s suitable for people with good taste. The territory is familiar: more or less modern day, except there are creepy-crawlies (including vampires) running around and everybody knows it. Sunshine is set right after the war that occurred when that particular fact became public knowledge, I think — the timing is never made clear. There’s a young spunky heroine, there’s a vampire, there’s romance (not necessarily with the vampire), and so on.

The good: the prose is solid and Sunshine, the eponymous protagonist, is a fairly good character. Also good: the background doesn’t get drawn into place with a straight-edge. You have to pick up on what happened by paying attention, and I like a book that makes me think a bit.

The bad: weakish plotting in which characters don’t have to make choices. Inchoate ending, somewhat anticlimactic. It feels as though McKinley came up with an awesome setting concept and then wrote a documentary about it.

I liked it. The good is pretty good and the bad is forgivable.

Five redux

In a futile effort to save Chris, show off for Brant, and feed my own ego:

Texcatlipoca Has Come From The North: a companion game to Huey Long’s Men of Action, set in AD 1000 or so in the Yucatan. Brave Byzantine warriors and their Viking allies battle the hordes of the god-king Quetzalcoatl. It uses D20 psionics rules, either Mindshadows or the WotC offering, depending on which is better. No magic. Plenty of Cathars.

The Seven Familes: there are seven great familes in the shadows of the world, struggling for dominance. Mystic flavor — perhaps stealing a little from GURPS Cabal. Ritual actions have subtle effects, so that getting married at the proper time with the proper flowers could provide luck for the family in certain endeavors for the next year, but there are no fireballs. One could think of this as roleplaying humans in the world of Nobilis, if one liked. Maybe use the Window system.

St. Cuthbert’s Men of Action: full-blown pulp adventure in a fantasy world. Despite the title, I wouldn’t actually want to use D&D. I don’t have a preferred pulp system yet… but I digress. The setting is Victorian in the cities and pulp as heck out in the jungles. Think Tarzan here. Humans and dwarves and elves are picking themselves back up again after a lengthy Dark Age; researchers are rediscovering old principles of magic, and the remnants of the First Age lie in the center of the forgotten cities, where mystical defense grids still wait for intruders. Good fun. At least one NPC named Hector.

The Legion: Trinity imagined as space opera. Described in detail here. Takes place in the Aeon Universe, but tilted somewhat to get the classic Jack Williamson space opera feel — not as grandiose as E. E. Smith’s books, but very steel-jawed. This is almost heresy, but since Trinity D20 makes it more attractive to play non-psions, I might use that over the original.

Ki-ki-ki-ki-ki: There is no magic in the world because the dolphins took it all to fight the good fight against the horrendous Cthulhoid creatures that live beneath the sea. As countless Call of Cthulhu scenarios prove, humans cannot be trusted with esoterica. There are two components to this game. In one, a small cadre of trusted human librarians retrieves copies of the Necronomicon and other such tomes from surface libraries. In the other, elite dolphin magickal squads combat Rl’yeh’s minons and the Mi-Go (who have long since eradicated and/or enslaved the native denizens of the Hollow Earth). The players take on one PC on each side of the water. Uses Call of Cthulhu mechanics.

Predictable luck

In SI today, Peter King asks “How lucky are the Patriots to have Troy Brown (third interception vs. Cincinnati) to ride to the rescue of their secondary?”

Not lucky at all. The Pats have Troy Brown in that position because Bill Belichick has a policy of taking advantage of his best athletes whenever possible; this is why Mike Vrabel caught a touchdown pass in Super Bowl XXXVIII, and it’s why you see Richard Seymour lining up as fullback from time to time. Thus, Belichick asked Troy Brown to play a little defense during the pre-season this year, way before there was any hint of trouble or injury in the secondary. People thought it was a risky idea at the time. You’d think we’d have learned not to try and outthink Belichick by now.

The season begins

The Golden Globe nominees have been announced. Is The Passion of the Christ anywhere in there? Nope. Probably should have been; it’s a spectacular movie with a questionable message, but I don’t think I want award shows to be in the business of judging messages. That’s the kind of thing that leaves Crash without an Oscar. (It did, however, win Best Alternative Adult Feature Film in the Adult Video News Awards in 1998, despite being released in 1996. I don’t know how that works. For some reason the award wasn’t blurbed on the DVD box.)

Where was I? Ah, yes. Biopics are hot. Most of the Best Drama nominees are biopics. All of the Best Actor (Drama) nominees are from biopics. Most of the Best Actor (Musical or Comedy) nominees are from biopics.

Natalie Portman got a nomination for Closer, but Julia Roberts did not. Clive Owen got one; Jude Law did not. Julianna Margulies, my high school’s most famous graduate, got nominated for television work.

Electoral plans

So we’re gonna do the elections differently in 2008. I’ve been thinking about it. I have a plan.

We’re not going to vote for candidates. We’re going to vote for parties. You’ll cast one vote for a party, and you’ll be done. That will simplify things. Every party puts together a list of candidates, with their top candidate at the top and so on. Individuals can run too, but as you’ll see in a moment, it’s not a very good idea.

After everyone votes, we’ll total up the votes. X% of the people on each party’s list will be elected to Congress, where X% is the percentage of the total vote going to that party. So if 55% of the people vote Democratic, then 55% of Congress will be Democrats. Easy and simple. See why it’s bad for an individual to run? If you vote for an individual, then you’re only voting for one person and you have no say in the rest of Congress. Better to vote for a party.

This is not a parable.

Turnabout and stab

A while ago I posted a review of K. J. Parker’s Colours in the Steel. I finally got around to reading the other two books in the trilogy. At the time, I said “I’m happy to have two more chunks of comfortable reading ahead of me.”

Two, yes. Chunks, yes. Reading, yes. Well-written, yes. Comfortable? Not to any notable degree. In the end, the Fencer trilogy is a tragedy about the Loredan family and their inability to love one another. I would still recommend them, but they are not in any way nice.

And then they touched

Closer is the movie that Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance wanted to be: it’s a story about the pain humans cause one another. It succeeds where Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance failed, because the characters are people and not caricatures and because Mike Nichols recognizes that pain arises from the cruelties we deal one another. It’s very close to being a great movie.

The only flaw in the ointment is Julia Roberts, but let’s leave that for a moment. It’s the best Jude Law performance of the year, edging out his executive in I ♥ Huckabees. He’s still got that surface gloss which detracts a little from his performance, but like his executive, this is a role that fits that gloss. And his body language is a thing of beauty. Particularly during his scenes with Natalie Portman: the pair of them express themselves in exactly the way lovers interact. Not when they’re first meeting — that’s not so hard — but when they’re parting badly, and one of them wants to taste the other’s mouth, and there’s the moment of wanting to give in, to comfort, but no, you can’t —

They had that down perfectly. Body language was the key to both of their performances. If you see it, or see it again, watch how Natalie Portman moves. When she’s unhappy or uncomfortable she’s a feral jittery thing who can’t keep still. She moves, and tics, and tilts her head, and never comes to rest. When she’s on her home ground, she’s a feral calm thing who moves, well, like a woman who knows she has the edge. It’s a great transformation. It’s definitely nomination-worthy.

Apparently the studio is pushing Julia Roberts for the Best Actress nomination, while Natalie Portman is relegated to Best Supporting Actress, but that’s wrong. If I had to pick, and I’d hate to do it, I’d say Natalie Portman has the marginally more important role. Clive Owen is getting pushes for Best Supporting Actor and Jude Law for Best Actor, but that split makes more sense. And Jude Law was a touch better than Clive Owen, although there was nothing wrong with Clive Owen’s performance. He’s not as good an actor, but does he bring the heat? Yes, he brings the angry crude cunning heat. The scene in which he and Julia Roberts break up is so furious that the theater exhaled when it ended.

That was not, I think, a spoiler. Then again, it is, but you would be poorly served if you entered into an act of commerce involving Closer without the awareness that this is a movie about people who hurt other people by granting and withdrawing and withholding their love. You want to brace for it.

And Julia Roberts? She’s a cipher. She is the actress who is boldly playing an older woman, but not really. No crows-feet. The role was originally going to Cate Blanchett, which would have worked out better. There’s nothing horrendous about Julia Roberts, but she’s such a passive actress. Even when she’s playing heated, it’s hard to believe her. The other characters have emotions, but she drifts. This is perhaps in some part the character. It still weakens the film to a degree.

At one level, the movie is about two men fighting; they use their relationships with two women as the battleground. This is exactly as un-feminist as it sounds. Natalie Portman undermines that, though. It’s not that she’s admirable, it’s that she understands the battleground as well as the men. So do they use her as a place to fight? Yes. But she is using them in other, more subtle ways. She’s a person, not an object. I’m not sure I can say the same about Julia Roberts, whose Anna is so passive that at times it seems like she just follows the last man who seduces her, in whatever sense of “seduces” one likes.

Perhaps, again, this was the point of the character. But if so, all I can say is that Julia Roberts was born to play that role.

In the end, mind you, it doesn’t matter because everyone else brings enough anger and passion and desire to the screen to more than make up for any lack on her part. It’s a fine movie which will be on my top ten list in a month or two. I should also caveat that my distaste for Julia Roberts may be irrational; if you would agree with that statement, feel free to disregard the last three paragraphs. A lot of critics really liked her performance.

Instead, consider the elegant cool greys and blues of the film, and don’t be put off by the contrived slow-motion opening sequence which seems so much like just another bad romance opening. The bookend closing sequence parodies it ruthlessly, up to and including the mawkish song. It is a meticulous movie, and I liked it very much.