greyduck.net

Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Category: Media

This is a container category for media reviews and related drivel.

  • Shadowmarch

    As I prepare to embark on a novel-writing adventure, I should tell you about my recent novel-reading adventure. And by “adventure” I mean “week-long slog.”

    So there’s this castle near the barrier/border between the lands of normal folks and the lands of the fairie-folk. The king’s been kidnapped, and through a series of circumstances power is thrust into the hands of twin royal siblings, Barrick and Briony. One’s a petulant, moody sort with a weak constitution. The other’s a hot-tempered, moody sort with a yen for crossdressing. There are other characters (and charicatures) running around, but the story centers on those two. Oh, and a halfling— um, Funderling named Chert. And… oh, nevermind. I’m not here to run through the list of principal characters who inhabit Southmarch. We’d be here all afternoon.

    Meanwhile, a continent or so away, we meet a young lady who gets sucked up into palace intrigue as the newest of a horde of wives of a pharaonic despot sort of ruler. Periodically the book takes little side trips to check on her miserable existence. One assumes that in later volumes she’ll become, you know, important or some-such.

    I’ll sum up: Lots of bad things happen. In fact, very few good things happen. People die, often in creepy and/or grisly fashion. Betrayals and intrigue abound. Dark magicks are employed. There’s not much in the way of humor, and there’s an incredible weight of plot setup that, one again assumes, will pay off in the later books. There’s no cliffhanger ending (though until the last few chapters I was convinced there would be), and in fact this book manages to end satisfactorily instead of just abruptly cutting off. Mind you, it’s one of those “now all the pieces are in motion for the next volume” endings, but it could’ve been worse.

    Did I enjoy it? Well enough to keep reading it every night or so, but when I hit the end I was relieved rather than antsy for the next book. That’s not what we call “a good sign.” Oh, it’s well written, and the characters are fairly well fleshed out, and at the end I got the feeling that the plot from there on out will be rather interesting… but getting to that point took some doing. “Tedious” is one word that comes to mind.

    Your mileage may vary, but my basic recommendation is to wait for it in paperback and pick it up only if you’re committed to the fantasy genre and really need a complex bit of work to sink your teeth into.

    Shadowmarch website

  • Sand in unfortunate places

    “Well, I think I found out why your computer’s having problems, Miss.”

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    “But I could just be going way out on a limb, of course”

  • Hellboy

    I’ll keep this fairly short and sweet: Dalemar, The Ratboy and I saw Hellboy on Saturday. The movie clearly made such a strong impression on me that I felt compelled to pen a review post haste…

    …right. (What’s a cubit?)

    So, Hellboy, pros and cons. In the “pro” column we have a moderately amusing lead character, a pretty good nasty evil henchman, some not-too-shabby effects, and decent turns by Ron Perlman (the titular ‘Boy), John Hurt (the father-figure), and Karel Roden (Rasputin, of all people).

    And hey, that’s a Karel you see there. Woo hoo! Before you ask, no, his name has nothing to do with what I thought of his performance. For what it’s worth, though, he shows up as Struker in Bulletproof Monk as well. Make of that factoid what you will.

    In the “con” column, the movie didn’t really make much of an impression on me. A few laughs, a couple of “ooo, neat” moments, but ten minutes after I left the theater I had already put it completely out of my mind. It’s a popcorn movie, nothing more… and dammit, I’ve come to expect just a bit more from a good “adaptation” movie.

    Oh, and the “boyish-faced sidekick” guy annoyed me from start to finish. Man, what a pathetic lump of useless flesh he was.

    Overall? It’s not an actively bad movie. It’s also instantly forgettable. Since it lacks a big-screen-must-see effects sequence, I recommend waiting for rental. Or hell to freeze over, if you prefer.

    Sony Pictures – Hellboy

  • Nude

    The third album from the one-man band known as VAST is out and I’ve given it a few listens through. My overall impression is that in depth and richness it sounds more like the first album, but it’s constructed along the same lines as the second in terms of keeping the pacing snappy and the song lengths down under four minutes apiece. (There are two notable exceptions to that rule, one good and one not-so-good.)

    Visual Audio Sensory Theater, the self-titled-ish first album, was a dense and dark experimental work that was just as likely to explore religious as romantic themes. It is among my favorite records of all time, which is why I so eagerly awaited the arrival of Nude and before it Music For People, which I found to be generally enjoyable but with too much of a “must sell to radio” construction about it. My biggest beef with People is the uniformity of song length coupled with the reduction of subject matter down to being just a collection of love (new and lost) songs. It’s not a bad album, really, but it’s not exactly what I think of as a worthy follow-up to the original work.

    Nude is better. The subject matter is still love, new and lost and obsessive alike. One can hear more interesting things going on under the surface this time around, though. It feels as though Jon Crosby is trying to do the interesting things he did on his first album while still keeping to the industry-friendly song lengths and rock-n-roll elements that keep his bread buttered.

    Let’s cut to the, er, cuts. The two lead-off tracks are “Turquoise” and “Thrown Away,” respectively. They’re good, solid toe-tappers. Then we get to “Don’t Take Your Love Away,” which… isn’t. One of the two tracks to run over four minutes, it’s also the only track that leaves me completely underwhelmed. Ah well. “Be With Me” picks the pace up again, while “Lost” manages to be somber without sucking the enjoyment out of the listening experience.

    “Winter In My Heart” is one of the standout tracks here. There’s a quality of elegant pain to it that captivates me. It also counts as the obligatory parental-advisory moment, since Jon seems compelled to work an F-bomb just once into every album. Don’t ask me why.

    “I Need To Say Goodbye,” “Japanese Fantasy,” “Ecstacy” and “Candle” are generally good pieces, though only “Fantasy” stands out as particularly interesting among this set.

    The other over-four-minutes piece is “I Can’t Say No (To You),” and it makes up for all of the failures of its counterpart early in the album. I think this song shows best the promise of what we can expect to hear on future albums… at least, I certainly hope to hear more pieces at this level. It’s dark, obsessive, gentle and beautiful all at once.

    Nude closes out much as Music for People did, with a typically quiet piece centered on an acoustic guitar and uncluttered arrangement, in this case a little gem called “Desert Garden.” While not as hauntingly beautiful as “Lady of Dreams” from People, it’s still a charming little love song that I suspect will grow on me with time.

    While I nitpick and kibbutz here about specific tracks, only “Don’t Take Your Love Away” actually disappoints. Nude is a worthwhile listen, though perhaps not a true classic in the making. I’ve taken to looking at VAST as a work in progress… and this album shows progress and promise.

  • The Return of the King

    The final installment of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy was, indeed, awesome. And yet… after watching the extended versions of Fellowship and Two Towers the last two Mondays in the theater, it was also just about what I expected, nothing more nothing less. Few surprises there are, but those are generally pleasant ones.

    Let’s face it: You don’t need me to tell you that this is a movie worth seeing. All I can do here is offer my handful of thoughts about specific parts of the movie.

    Regarding Faramir: The Two Towers’ extended-version inclusion of the Faramir/Boromir/Denethor flashback is absolutely vital to understanding the relationship between Denethor and Faramir that we see in Return of the King.

    One of the things this movie did especially well was conveying a sense of bigness to things. The oliphaunts? Big. The seige weaponry and their projectiles? Way big. Minas Tirith? Awesome. Rocks are lobbed through the air, land, and generally do large-rock-like things to buildings and people in their path. Very, very cool stuff this is.

    On a technical side note, Peter Jackson clearly had total faith in his team’s skill with compositing. Wow. Check out Gandalf’s arrival at Minas Tirith.

    By the way, I hate spiders. Especially spiders that stand taller than a hobbit while on all eights. (I wouldn’t say “all fours,” now would I? Hmm?)

    I’m pleased to say that “Gimli, Comic Relief Dwarf” is at least genuinely funny part of the time… mainly because the lines aren’t so badly written as to require a forced delivery, unlike many of the quips in the first two films.

    Watch out for the pair (trio? did I lose count?) of false endings. The screen goes dark… for several seconds… and then it’s time for another scene! This happens more than once! Bleargh! It’s as if the filmmakers couldn’t decide where to end this thing, so they strung along a series of ending scenes for as far as the eye could see, then randomly picked a place and dropped the knife on it. Or something. Minor quibble, but it’s a sad way to leave the theater after such a great movie experience when your head’s reeling from the endings.

    When you’ve just sat through and dissected the qualities of the two previous films’ extended versions, you’re naturally going to think about what bits were probably excised from this film that might reappear for its extended edition release. It’s almost certain that there’s more to see of Aragorn’s transition from the ranger who arrives with the Rohirrim and the King who knocks on the Black Gate. One suspects there’s more to see of the fight between orc and Uruk-hai at that guard tower. And so on, and so on.

    One also suspects that Christopher Lee won’t be entirely appeased if his appearance in this film is restored when the DVD comes out. We could’ve done without the Smeagol flashback that started the movie, and seen Saruman’s last scenes instead. Ah well.

    All told, this is a film… a set of films, to be more accurate… that will stand as the high water mark for genre moviemaking many years from now. It’s an outstanding movie experience, despite quibbles over what was and wasn’t included from the source material.

    In a way, I’m glad it’s over. All the weight of years of anticipation is lifted, and the decades of nitpicking can begin at last…

  • X2: X-Men United

    There isn’t much I can say about this movie that hasn’t already been better said elsewhere, really. I’ll just touch on the key points:

    • For a two-hour-plus movie, very little time is wasted. Not often did I have pause to wonder about the time.
    • I’ll join my voice to the chorus of those who state that even out of an otherwise quite-good action adventure flick, the opening sequence is one of the coolest damned action bits ever filmed. Through the whole thing I was thinking, “Yes, yes, that is how he’d do it, that’s how that talent could be used.” Efficient, no, but if you wanted to make a powerful impression and that was your skillset… hell yes.
    • A surprising amount of the movie was devoted to… building up for the next movie. We get foreshadowing in practically the second scene. They did it well, mind you, but every time the subject came up I was thinking, “Boy, they’re banking heavily on that next set of contracts, aren’t they?” I’m not saying they didn’t handle that plot thread well, but it was glaringly obvious.
    • Related to that is the sad loss of impact of what should have been the climactic sequence of the film. We all know it was a soap-opera ending. Even folks who have no real background on popular X-Men comicbook storylines can tell that it was a gyp. It’s the script’s one glaring failure, dramatically.
    • Does Wolverine once again own the movie? Yes. Does anyone mind for a second? Hell no. And that’s all that needs saying about that.
    • Cameos, cameos, cameos. Spot Dr. Hank McCoy in a televised interview! See Colossus go metallic! See Shadowcat fleeing through walls! And so on, and so on. You know, in the third movie we’d better get to actually see Kitty’s face…
    • I adored the way they used mutant powers in low-key, comedy-beat, every-day fashion. Among the coolest (pun intended) is the quiet moment where Logan hands Bobby his bottle of product placement for a quick chill treatment. Nicely done.
    • You both like and loathe Magneto more in this movie, and that’s as it should be. Charming, clever, ruthless, manipulative, and always playing the game as deep as he can, he’s far more in this movie than just the megalomaniac from the first one.

    And yes, I think that about covers it. Unless you’re allergic to effects-laden action movies with decent characterization and a touch of wry humor, you should see this film.
    X2 movie website

Calendar

November 2025
S M T W T F S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
30  

My Links