Monthly Archives: June 2006

Bloody Bones

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As a result of a brief spate of overly long books, I went the short book route again, and might for the next little while. My immediate short book impulse these days is Anita Blake, because there are just so damned many of them and I can never find any Pratchett in the used bookstores. In that Bloody Bones mostly avoided the “How is our heroine’s love life these days?” thing that was starting to grate on me a bit, by virtue of taking the action out of St. Louis and over to beautiful, touristy Branson, I have to call the whole thing a rousing success.

I mean, okay, calling any of them a rousing success is perhaps overstating the case, but it’s nice to see some variation repairing the only real flaw in what’s been a nice bit of fluff over the past many months. This was an earlier edition than what I’m used to seeing, and the typos were mysteriously vanished. So I’m inclined to blame the new publisher a lot, now; if you insert new typos into future editions of a book that didn’t originally have them? That’s just sad. Most of the rest of what I have appear to be the not as good editions, but having solved the mystery, I probably won’t complain about it anymore. So there’s that. Plus, mystery-solving, look at me getting all kinshippy with the necromantic vampire-slayer chick.

So, what does this entry in the series have, relative to the others? Murders, as usual. Zombies, as usual. Vampires, as usual. Faeries, which is new. A different set of cops than usual, thanks to the jurisdictional change mentioned above. An apprentice vampire slayer, definitely new, but a welcome addition to the cast. More Anita-on-$Magical_Creature action than usual, but sure, that was always on the horizon from day one. Random vampire fetish games designed to squick our heroes, which was… well, kind of out of left field, but I suppose I need to be ready for that as the series progresses, so alright. Something approximating zombie sex, about which I will add little in order to not incriminate myself. (It failed to be nearly as hot as it should have been. Disillusioning!) Oh, and for once the mystery part was not completely interconnected from the get go, which change I like. The plots were starting to get a little too pat, despite how cleverly executed.

The Omen (2006)

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Here’s what I dislike about movies like The Seventh Sign, about the biblical end of days and whatnot: the plot always seems to revolve around finding a way to prevent the apocalypse and the final confrontation between good and evil, just as though that is somehow not God’s plan to divvy us up once and for all. So you’re left with a choice between the bad guys winning (which tends to be unsatisfying if the good guys are at all sympathetic, but at least it rips away the sham that we have free will in a Christian God-created world) or with the good guys winning, breaking with prophetic inevitability and making the whole thing feel like one in an infinite number of meaningless hands of divine Texas Hold ‘Em. (Ye gods, the spam hits I’m about to start getting.)

Did I go see the remake of The Omen last night? However did you guess? It essentially compared with the original, to my eyes, and was therefore quite good. Playing Damien’s adoptive father (and quite complicit in the deception that allowed our budding Antichrist access to his future power), Liev Schreiber was a particularly bright spot in the acting lineup despite being unsympathetic for the majority of the film. Or maybe he was only serviceable, and I have a thing for brooding as character trait. In any case, the kid was reasonably creepy/intense, there was a fair amount of good disturbing imagery and a lot of excellent mood-setting propwork, though bits of that were hampered by Final Destinationish death scenes. (Not that there’s anything wrong with them, they just sort of didn’t fit the mood of the film once the comparison was in my head. Apparently, evil deaths work in mysterious and unlikely ways.) As far as the cheap jump-in-your-seat thrills? Well, there were several, and they were cheap, sure… but at the same time, there’s something supremely satisfying about sitting in a theater full of people who have just been moved to scream from surprise. (Heck, they even got me to twitch reasonably well, at one point.)

And I haven’t even mentioned the awesomeness of Nanny Evil.

Half-Life 2: Episode One

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After all the time I spent in the aftermath of Half-Life 2, playing old versions of Half-Life and third-party mods and really enjoying the story, the mystery, and the gameplay all three (and including a replay of Half-Life 2 itself last month), finally some new stuff has appeared. Thusly did I dive into the descriptively named Episode One fairly late on launch day because of some weirdness with when they wanted to release the game to the public. So, whatev.

I wish I could say that was my biggest problem with the game, that delay. But it was not. My biggest problem was more of those damn sparkling pixels that so vexed me in Doom 3 (though white instead of red, this time, with occasional greens and yellows). I am left wondering if my computer is just badly misconfigured in some way or if ATI is an artifact of the past, as useful as so many potsherds brought as souvenirs to a Babylonian archaeology expedition. The sad part is, I only switched away from nVidia because of how they’d seemed to be behind for a few years and because Half-Life 2 was being designed with ATI specifically in mind. Also: I don’t remember this happening on my original play of HL2, yet I’m pretty sure it was present on the replay. Mysterious.

But still, that one really was my biggest problem with the game. All the actual play and storyline and mysteries? Cake. (I don’t really care for cake; it’s just an expression of approval in the generic sense. If I’d put ice cream or pie there, nobody would have known what I meant, is all.) After an intervention both surprising and foreboding, the game picks up almost immediately where the original left off, both in time and as a result necessarily in play style. The Combine has been shut down and crippled, but they’ll be back, and in the meantime City 17 is a deathtrap. Your two directives: escape to fight the battle another day, and also repopulate the world. From some of the looks Alyx was throwing Gordon’s way, I think that one might move to the top of the list before long, if only they can survive the… well, but that would be telling. Episode Two is supposed to be out toward year’s end, as I understand. I believe I am prepared for that occurrence.

Freedom and Necessity

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I think I may be getting bad at this. At least, lately I’ve been at a loss for descriptive words. In this case, my lack is for how to describe Freedom and Necessity, other than to say I liked it. I did, unquestionably, despite being of an insufficiently philosophic mind (or at the least insufficiently grounded in the basics of philosophic thought) to understand all of the historical nuances of the debates around Hegelian logic. …see, and this is exactly what I mean. Although Brust is very good at writing books that make me feel inadequate to fully appreciate them, that’s no excuse for me to make them sound like dry treatises with dense and well-disguised themes when I could as easily and far more approvingly describe them as rousing tales of adventure and skullduggery. So, y’know, bad. At this. (Also, I’m disregarding Emma Bull’s contribution to my enjoyment, but that is only because I’ve read nothing else by her and as a result can’t really put together in my head what that contribution was.)

So, I grabbed this book because of how Steven Brust is one of my buy on sight authors, these days. He is right to be, because of how everything I’ve read of his has a great authorial voice, humor that makes me laugh out loud[1], and plots that, though sometimes dense, always seem to hinge on exciting matters of life and death (and on occasion far more grave) that are guaranteed suck me in. As you might expect, this was just such a book.

Set in 1849-1850 England, this epistolary novel follows the loves and politics of a family that has just been struck by tragedy in the form of drowned James Cobham. Except that, two months later, he sends a letter to his cousin Richard informing that he is alive and without memory of his recent past. From there, the story quickly branches out to the addressing of that conundrum and a number of other family mysteries, the struggle between the proletariat and its oppressive masters, affairs of state, a magical conspiracy, blossoming love, and of course murder most foul. Allowing one of the characters eidetic memory combined with a penchant for writing letters long enough dam the Thames was perhaps overly transparent of the authors, but the unique and entertaining voices of all four main characters (one of whom cannot end a sentence to save her life) more than made up for that lone violation of my suspension of disbelief.

[1] I’ll admit here that I might seem to some people to laugh easily; to those people I would say that in fact I have a highly refined sense of humor, but choose to surround myself with people and things that activate it. So there.

The Da Vinci Code

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The short answer is: someone made a near enough to duplicate as makes no difference film version of the Da Vinci Code novel. As a result, there is nearly nothing new to say from what I said a year ago.

Slightly longer answer: good realization of the sets and props described in the novel, with film improving the prose at most every step. Possibly better explanations of things, certainly not in a way that made me think any of the characters were stupider than they ought to be, much unlike the book. I can’t recall the book’s dialogue well enough to compare that bit. Somewhat actiony, extremely sacreligious if you are a lot of people, approximately as much information density as a 30 minute Discovery special on the topic. As movies go, it was really quite good. Also, Sir Ian was cool, like always. And the bad guy reveal was not nearly so clumsy as I thought it was in the book, or else maybe I was able to see the foreshadowing better. But I doubt it; I think the foreshadowing was actually presented better, instead. Advantage: Ron Howard!

The Poseidon Adventure

I thought I ought to ground myself in history, so thanks to my good friends at Netflix, I snagged The Poseidon Adventure no more than a week after its remake’s release date, to watch prior to catching said remake. (Because I am nothing if not timely. Also: product endorsements deserve to be rewarded with free stuff. Just saying, good friends at Netflix.) The seventies were a different time is what I have learned. Sure, blah blah blah special effects cakes, but that’s not the thing. The thing is the acting. With the exception of Ernest Borgnine (who was frankly superb) and Roddy McDowall, every single male in the cast acted via angry loud voice. It was just bizarre to watch, especially in Gene Hackman, who I have certainly seen perform well enough in other (notably later) roles. Meanwhile, the women were mostly called upon to scream a lot. This is somewhat less surprising on the whole, but still pretty sad. As the main exception here was Ernest Borgnine’s wife, I am forced to assume that it was talent by osmosis.

As for the plot? Well, you know, boat flips over, people try to survive in upside-down boat. Is there more that you need to know? I will say that the set design did an almost non-existent job of conveying upside-downness, which robbed the movie of a good third of its purported impact. I expect that the remake will handle that part, at least. And maybe less shouting. But mostly better special effects traded in for someone not as good as Borgnine. Probably this is a bad thing; it certainly would be if the original had been a tour de force, but since it was not, I’ll take what I can get.