Hal Clement has passed away. Another of the greats… may he rest in peace. Tributes here.
Category: Culture
Bubba Ho-tep ought to have been great. I mean, hey: Elvis, JFK, Texas, and a mummy. What’s not to like?
I think the problem was that the setup creates a certain gonzo expectation, and the movie doesn’t want to be gonzo. The movie wants to be a tragi-comic exploration of old age in a nursing home, with a dark sarcastic twist in the form of the mummy. It works pretty well on that level, but it sabotages itself because, hey — it’s Elvis! Funny!
If Elvis and JFK had been more clearly delusional, that might have helped. However, Bruce Campbell does an absolutely spot-on Elvis. Now, it’s possible to believe that Ossie Davis’ character isn’t really JFK. In fact, it’s pretty easy, because he doesn’t do a very good JFK impression and he’s sort of the wrong ethnicity. Bruce is perfect, though. I couldn’t bring myself to doubt that this old man actually was Elvis, even though the backstory was pretty implausible.
Of course, the mummy was pretty implausible too. There’re those gonzo expectations again.
Anyhow, I still enjoyed it. There are moments of brilliance, both lunatic and otherwise. I really felt for Elvis/Sebastian. It’s just that the setup doesn’t work for the story.
While Sean Stewart’s web site has been redesigned, there’s not really much new information. Still just the brief note about The Glass Coffin. Alas.
He has added a section on “The Beast,” also known as “That big Web game designed to promote A.I.” There’s a very good introduction to the game. Reading it, I keep wondering what he’s been up to, and I wonder a little if he’ll ever write a novel again.
Best eBay auction description ever. Read it quick before it ages out. In my heart of hearts I figure this is a clever scam, since the seller does a big trade in vintage items, but it’s still very funny.
This post is pretty much for Patrick. Others may be amused as well.
Chapter 11 of Dan Simmons’ new book, Hard Freeze, starts like this:
“How’s the book?” asked Kurtz. He squinted at the title. “Isn’t that the same guy you were reading twelve years ago, before I got sent away?”
“Yeah. His detective fought in the Korean War, which makes the old fart in his late sixties at least, but he still kicks ass. A new book comes out every year, if not sooner.”
“Good, huh?”
“Not anymore,” said Arlene. “The P.I.’s got a girlfriend who’s a real bitch. An arrogant piece of work. And she’s got a dog.”
“So?”
“A dog who eats on the table and sleeps in their bed. And the P.I. loves them both to bits.”
“Then why do you keep reading them?”
“I keep hoping the P.I. will wake up and cap both the girlfriend and that ratty dog,” said Arlene.
Remember that huge Straight Dope thread a year or so ago in which countless people rewrote Lord of the Rings in another author’s voice? Now it’s been collated. Imperfect but amusing.
Worthy of note: Kip Manley’s City of Roses kicked off today. If you don’t recall, it’s a piece of “urbane fantasy” (his coinage as far as I know, and a lovely one) provided to us with webcomic pacing but not in webcomic form. I.e., we’ll get a piece of it on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; and it’s text, not pictures. Eloquent text.
The setting is Portland. The magic is indeterminate. I expect it to be very good, because Kip can write.
Nobody but Tarantino could have made Kill Bill. Which, if you have a taste for the coppery scent of Tarantino’s oeuvre, is about all the review you need. It helps to have seen Switchblade Sisters.
Um.
OK, so it’s insane grindhouse cinema turned up a few notches. The extended Japanese scenes are an homage to Japanese samurai flicks. The Texas scenes taste like Sergio Leone, just a bit. There’s a touch of blaxsploitation. She’s wearing Bruce Lee’s jumpsuit.
There is no plot. Apparently all the plot comes in the second volume of the movie. That’s OK, because there’s plenty of kickass fight scene in this. There’s also a lot of blood, and by a lot, I mean “more than you think.” Like a lot of other people, I seriously don’t understand how this movie avoided an NC-17 rating.
Four months till the second half is the suck.
According to DVDfile.com, Sapphire and Steel is about to see a DVD release. Sadly, I can’t find a press release on the topic, just the one mention. Still excellent news; this is some of the best of freaky BBC ATV science fiction.
(Thanks to Adam Tinworth for correcting my lame knowledge of British TV.)
(TINWORTH. No excuse except being up till 2 AM last night watching the baseball playoffs.)
You wouldn’t expect a movie about corporate espionage among multinational anime porn to be a bad viewing experience… well, OK, maybe you would. Still, I thought Demonlover was worth my ten bucks. Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep got excellent reviews, and Demonlover stars Connie Nielsen and Gina Gershon, so there was potential there.
I pretty much liked the first half. Chloe Sevigny was tremendously callow, and whether or not her character was meant to be played that way, her performance left me cold. The rest of the movie was fine, though. Very stylish, shot in blues and greys in a kind of 70s futuristic aesthetic. The plot was nicely tangled.
In the last hour or so, the movie went seriously downhill. The final shots struck me as deeply non-profound, despite being set off from the rest of the film in style and tone. But the message didn’t live up to the stylistic flourishes. Further, there wasn’t any tension after a certain point. The resolution came about halfway through the movie, and everything afterwards was just an extended version of the “ten years later” epilogues common in bad 80s teen comedies.
Good concepts. Bad execution.