"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Basically Ryan Coogler's From Dusk Til Dawn (though the similarities are in the essential plot, not in tone nor quality), Sinners is what I would call a full meal. An impeccably chosen cast headed by Michael B. Jordan in a dual role. A tight story taking place in a single day, but spending enough time with the characters up front that it matters when things take a turn for the worse. A cool mix of Old Time Religion in different aspects informing the horror elements (voodoo, Southern Gothic, folk horror). Cool, unobtrusive effects (my own complaint the color and consistency of the blood, looked odd to me). And above all, the music! Sinners is almost a musical in the way it deploys score and soundtrack, making them part of the story it's telling. Music as a cultural continuum, as something to be appropriated by oppressors (as is the case of blues and especially, what blues would be turned into - if there's a hidden theme, it's there, under the skin), as, therefore, a way to travel through time and narrative. Very, very satisfying on every level.
At home: A sign that the Czech New Wave marked an era of unusual localized freedom behind the Iron Curtain, When the Cat Comes (AKA The Cassandra Cat) is a charming and whimsical fable that teaches kids that it's wrong to blindly bend to authority. In a village of zanies, the old castellan tells a third-grade class a tall tale and it suddenly starts happening as a circus drives into town, with their magical cat that can expose people's true natures (but not before we see a cool magic show). But can the kids and their good-hearted teacher prevent the tragedy heralded to be the story's end? A lot of fun technical surprises, but the film looks gorgeous even without them, an ode to small town life and tight-knit communities, AS WELL AS to anarchy. And despite being a "family film", it still has its share of ambiguity, and I wonder what kids and adults alike this of the authoritarian Director's fate.
While I didn't expect a bouncy 60s teen musical from the Czech New Wave, nothing really surprises me about the movement. The Hop-Pickers (AKA Green Gold) is like Beach Blanket Bingo, but set in a farming commune/school where the kids dare to fall in love and bully each other for being individualists, while secretly envying them for their anarchic disconnection from the State mandate. It's pretty amazing, and I think bold in its portrayal of youthful rebellion (read: human nature) in the face of Soviet-style Communism (an artificial imposition). Even the kids who conform are still looking to exploit the system from within and are aware of inequities in the application of worker utopia. The politics don't detract from the fact that this IS a swinging teeny-bopper musical with okay melodies (to Western ears, possibly) and fun numbers (never better than the "wet dream" sequence). The electric guitar chorus that pops up every so often is a particular delight.
I'm always interested to see works produced in one culture translated to another, and A Case for a Rookie Hangman is a good example. Loosely based on Gulliver's third voyage (Balnibarbi and Laputa), its Czech reimagining turns it into something more closely resembling Kafka (with overt apologies to Jonathan Swift). So from caustic satire about 18th-Century scientists to dark absurdist nightmares that question totalitarianism (here, communist, but really, of any stripe). Most of the action takes place in Balnibarbi, a country in the shadow of a floating island. Here, leaders rule over nothing, guardians protect nothing, poets have nothing to say, and scientists use pointless classifications to understand the world. We don't spend nearly as much time in Laputa in the sky, but the thing that casts the shadow can't be too far from the shadow itself. What he finds there, more than anything, is a disconnect between the elite above and the workers below. And yet, the the downtrodden cannot believe K -- I mean, Gulliver -- because that would mean upending the system. Rather surreal, it can be difficult to get into, but some of the slapstick is actually pretty funny, in a Mr. Bean kind of way. If I'd read Gulliver's Travels more recently than I have (especially this voyager which I remember the LEAST), I'm sure I'd have gotten more out of it. Or perhaps been even more mystified, who knows?
Dubbed as a "conversation" with a 1981 film, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World uses clips from Angela Goes On, a Romanian romance starring a female taxi driver, and contrasts them to show Bucharest's evolution - socially, geographically, cinematically - with the story of another Angela, a cantankerous production assistant and Tik Tok content creator played by Ilinca Manolache, always on the road getting a PSA set up, her candles being burnt at both ends. The central irony of Radu Jude's highly satirical film is that for a "safety at work" video, she is being asked to do things that are not safe. Maverick work that might test some audiences' patience - we spend a lot of time alone with her in a car listening to the radio, the cross montage, Angela's vulgar online persona, the climax one long shot where everything and nothing happens... - but I was frankly fascinated. Bold moves, and a magnetic star in Manolache that just kept me riveted, even absent any real knowledge about contemporary Roumania, as I'm sure I missed half the satire.
[Estonia] What an absolutely insane retro-cyberpunk spy thriller Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway is! Disabled Ethiopian actor Daniel Tadesse plays an unlikely CIA agent in a world overlaid with a global virtual reality, kind of like a lo-fi Matrix (I really like the live action stop-motion effect), infected with the dangerous Stalin virus and other weird villains. Agent Gagano gets trapped in there, and all he wants to do is escape to be with the woman he loves (and considering the amount of non-actors and dubbed dialog, it's amazing how invested I was in this love story). If that's even real. Director Miguel Llansó's script wears its Philip K. Dick inspirations on its sleeve, what with a character called Eldritch Palmer and all, and I think the retro-ness of the Cold War fantasy is part of that. Dick was always imagining a future too close (that we've since passed) and churning out alternate realities in the process. A crazy movie and a lot of fun.
[Belarus] Fortress of War is a well-made film about opening the Eastern Front, something which I knew nothing about. I wasn't even aware there was a Brest in Belarus (only the one in France), but it's on the Polish border, and the film tells the story of how the Germans attacked the town and its Medieval fortress as a declaration of war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The film does a good job of presenting the characters we'll follow - a kid bugler (and our narrator, a participating observer who will be our main hero), a family man, a young couple in love, an officer who missed his train, a disgruntled strategist whose advice was ignored - then making them suffer through an outright massacre as they try to hold off the enemy while waiting for reinforcements. Action and violence are at the forefront, almost procedurally so, but we know enough from the prologue and the performances to care about each of these military heroes, and the direction is at once brutal and beautiful, crafting poetic imagery out of loss, death and destruction. In spite of the nationalistic propaganda innate to war films that are not overtly anti-war, it's still interesting to see other countries' war stories.
Books: Described as an "alternate take" on Keanu Reeves' BRZRKR comic, The Book of Elsewhere enjoys the participation of a top-tier novelist in China Miéville, so, no shade on the comic's co-writer, Matt Kindt, who is one of my favorites, but liked the novel better (especially the ending - the last 200 pages were a freight train). It's partly a question of medium - the comic's strengths included the art, but the novel shines through prose alone. Miéville once said he wanted to write a book in every conceivable genre. This is his "tie-in novel", something that most often reads as disposable, but The Book of Elsewhere is too strong for that epithet. What he finds interesting in the world of the immortal warrior Unute creates a nemesis for the character and a war between Life and Death that isn't cut and dried, and when other creatures start appearing to resurrect like Unute does, things grow more and more existential. The story chapters are separated by intriguing pieces set in the past (like the comic), either told by those whose lives intersected Unute, or focusing on his perceptions directly, revealing things in the past as they relate to the present. Since it's not actually connected to BRZRKR, yes, it can be read without any knowledge of the comic. It helped me center the characters, however, so I'd recommend reading both for the best experience.
Collecting all 5 issues of Chrissy Williams and Lauren Knight's comic about an island of exiled "old women", Golden Rage "vol.1" feels, well, unfinished! I had picked up the first issue of Golden Rage: Mother Knows Best not realizing it was a sequel, so I tracked back. And while the original mini from 2022 is very good, it builds up to something and ends on a cliffhanger, which is then not all resolved in the 2025 mini. So either the event is delayed (either late in the new mini, or in a future mini), or things have happened that we've not been told about. Or perhaps that IS an ending - certainly, there's a satisfying emotional component - and it was always meant to be read this way. We're still left with well-drawn characters, as a new arrival to the island shakes things up, allying with a trio of old ladies against a vicious gang that's taken control. Good world-building without actually revealing much about the outside. A mix of perspectives and narration from issue to issue. Good art. And I love those quotes from The Golden Girls at the end of every chapter. The collection has a lot of back material (most from the comics themselves) including alternate covers, recipes, knitting instructions, book reviews, nature survival advice, according to the speaking character's interests.
Collecting all 4 issues of the (first) mini-series, The Great British Bump-Off is a very fun book by John Allison and Max Sarin, a comedy Agatha Christie mystery set during the filming of the Great British Bake-Off. Can our messy detective heroine Shauna live her dream of winning a baking contest on television AND solve the premeditated poisoning of one of the contestants? It might be beyond her multi-tasking skills, but we're going to have fun trying to solve the fair play mystery with her. Sarin's art is very cute and humorous, and Allison is quick with the cool references (those movie-related cakes are... something). Filled with quickly-defined and memorable characters (that nasty judge should be a favorite), TGBBO makes for a quick read, but not because its pages are spare - there's a lot of detail - but because you're propelled to read it all before those details elude you.
According to the lore, since The Tomb of the Cybermen was a lost Doctor Who serial until the early 1990s, the Target novelisation is what fans grew up dreaming about. And according to that same lore, many were vaguely disappointed when they saw the actual footage. Personally, I don't get it. While, obviously, the serial has the same limitations as other episodes from the era, it's still got gigantic Cybermen, cool effects, and amazing music. And now reading the novelisation, I find it hedges very close to what was put on screen, refuting the notion that this Target somehow made the story seem more grandiose and epic. I guess Doctor Who fans can never be truly happy. Gerry Davis is head writer on these Cyberman adaptations (and indeed, having co-written these particular episodes), so it's all of a piece. Well-rendered without really adding too much to it. He does go on a bit too much about Kaftan's "beauty", as if protesting the casting of the producer's wife at the time (or showing untoward attraction towards her, but his re-casting of her and Toberman as being from the Middle-East may point to original intent rather than a reaction to choices made by others).
Terrence Dicks' efficient prose does a good job with Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen - a Target early enough to score some interior illustrations, though not the first despite its #1 label - in two areas especially. 1) The descriptions of the High Intelligence are more overtly Lovecraftian (the serial was arguably the first Doctor Who story with Lovecraftian vibes, but I do say "arguably"). And 2) the action scenes involving an army of monks versus robotic Yeti feature better action than the show at this point could ever have done. Uncle Terry is also adept at putting us in various points of view, from Travers' impending madness to Victoria's drowsy cluelessness. The one faux-pas, I suppose, is just how off-handedly he introduces the Great Intelligence. It's suddenly named as if readers should know (and maybe they do, but as this serial is mostly lost, I don't think that was a given).
Bryan Hayles adapts his own story in Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors, introducing the Martian giants and boy... It's not Hayles' fault, but poor Jamie has been freezing his knees off in three consecutive stories now, hasn't he? Though I was afraid the technobabble would take over from that first scene, it's actually a competent and fast-paced action story in the end, Hayles giving his guest characters slightly more depth (Miss Garrett is more sympathetic, for example). Pace is an interesting thing to examine, actually. The first two parts (of six) comprise more than half the page count, pointing to a lot of padding in the last four on television. Indeed, we're spared the terrifying threat of a bear cub and Jamie doesn't need to pass out, come to and pass out again. The cuts are for the good. The bit I do question is that he's changed (in his mind, updated?) the reason for the New Ice Age, and it's... we overdid it with recycling and "depollution"? I'm not sure that's the messaging I want young readers to get...
Ian Marter turns Doctor Who and the Enemy of the World into a tight thriller, usually making improving scenes with his flair for tension and trademark violence, even if I miss a lot of the scenes that were cut from the adaptation (Griff's stuff, especially). This is an interesting one because half the serial was considered lost until about a dozen years ago, and therefore the Target would have how a lot of fans first experienced it. But unlike Tomb of the Cybermen, which apparently disappointed readers "in the flesh", so to speak, The Enemy of the World is as much a joy as its novelisation. It's witty in its own right, the extra scenes are great fun, and the performances surprising. That's in large part because Marter himself uses beautifully descriptive prose and isn't precious about the original dialog. Neither version exactly replaces the other. But woof, who thought this was the best cover idea for a serial about the Doctor having an evil doppelganger?
Terrence Dicks is back adapting the High Intelligence in Doctor Who and the Web of Fear, and I'm sure he salivated at the chance to write the Doctor's first meeting with Brigadier (then Colonel) Lethbridge-Stewart! Already a solid military thriller, Dicks reorders some scenes to avoid Troughton's holiday onscreen, but generally to make things move more smoothly. He also gives us brief, but pithy backgrounds for most of the characters, covering in particular the interim between The Abominable Snowmen and this (with Travers). Since the Brig can't possibly be the High Intelligence stooge, he does a better job of throwing shade on other chadacters, and because he knows the future of the show, can't help but sow the seeds of UNIT and the Doctor/Brigadier friendship. That's something that could not have been known at the time, but is not too much of a retcon and therefore met with a smile a decade on in this novelisation.
RPGs: We played Call of Cthulhu this week, after voting on blurbs for adventures in a couple books our Keeper just bought, but we didn't really get into the adventure per se. This was a transition session where we described down-time, worked on skills and relationships, advanced/introduced subplots, and set things up for our big trip to Egypt where expeditions have been meeting with mysterious (but undoubtedly deadly) fates. Sessions like this are low-stress and quite enjoyable, and I was awarded with extra points of Luck for doing my research. The year is now 1924, and so I made my character overly interested in the France Olympics of that year, which I guess counted for something. Of course, I'm more interested in an archaeological dig Egypt, seeing as my character is played by John Rhys-Davies (if you get my reference). I also seem to have developed a writing rival - Winnipeg Winters, a likely nom de plume - who tried to scoop me on novelizing the last adventure (I scooped him right back, but do intend on discovering who this spoiler is). I hacked that book out in no time - they don't call me a hack for nothing - and it became a bestseller. You can find "The Iron Sky", Book 3 of The Twilight Tea Society series (although the first marked as such) in bookstores near you (if you live in 1924). The other PCs - the world's worst nun and the disfigured giant - had their own stuff going on, of course. Next month: Let's ride some camels to the Valley of Kings! In a way, this feels very familiar, because Torg Eternity, the game *I'm* running, makes use of Cairo and Egyptian tombs quite a lot.
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