Tag Archives: fantasy

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

2 Replies

I am thinking that today may be a good day to watch movies. Not sure yet if that’s how the rest of my day will proceed, but I can state definitively that it has begun that way, with the Prince of Persia movie that came out back in May. Which I think was the only movie I’ve actually missed all summer? Yay for being caught up! Possibly because it was based on a video game or possibly because I never heard anyone really talking about it, I am surprised to report that it was pretty good.

In the pro-column: a good soundtrack and really a lot of excellent action sequences that captured the spirit of both the specific game it was based on as well as the whole series, while cleverly jettisoning the majority of that game’s plot, which was good enough for a platformer game, but, well. Instead, our titular prince must unravel a plot to overthrow the throne of Persia when he is framed for the murder of his father the king, with only a princess who hates him and a sporadically magic dagger for allies. Y’know, pretty much the same plot as any action-adventure movie, when you get right down to it, but on the bright side, those are usually good.

In the con-column: way, way too many “sly” references to current events, including a search for weapons of mass destruction and railing against high taxes. This is why Star Wars is the better movie, y’know. Nobody was complaining about taxes in Star Wars. That and the desert may be the only substantive differences, though.

Eric

3 Replies

If all the Discworld books had been like Eric, well, okay, probably most people that I know would still have read them. They are, after all, competently written comedic fantasy. But they wouldn’t talk about them nearly as much as they do, at the least. I mean, as a representation of the kinds of things that tend to happen in Discworld, it is a top notch book. The problem is that, even as short a distance into the series as I am, I’ve come to expect a fair amount more incisive literary and social depth, and never mind the amount I expect from all the buzz that surrounds later books in the series. By contrast to that experience/buzz, this book was a merely[1] funny series of vignettes strung together as a parody of Faust with a horny thirteen-year old in the eponymous role and resident failure (as a wizard, too, but I more meant it with a capital F) Rincewind as the wish-granting demon. If that doesn’t make a lot of sense, well, that’s what the plot is for, yeah?

The sad thing is, I’m totally not joking about it being funny or a really good sample of the kind of thing that happens every day on the Disc. If there’s a moral to my story, it’s this: expectations are a fickle bitch. And as for great expectations, well, they were written by Dickens, which I think tells you everything you need to know.

[1] he says, as though that’s not a reasonably tough accomplishment on its own

Jack of Fables: The (Nearly) Great Escape

2 Replies

A few volumes ago, I made reference to my knowledge (garnered through the publishing industry) that Jack Horner, the same Jack who climbs beanstalks and kills giants, would be getting his own spin-off comic series soon. That was true, of course, and I’ve finally reached the point in publication order where his book interrupts the straight-through Fables series. (Which, by the way, is wow, long series. And I think it has no end in sight? So that’s a thing.) The Jack of Fables series picks up exactly where his story in the main continuity left off: with Jack once again on the wrong side of Fable law and in pursuit of a new way to re-create his wealth, fame, and generally easy lifestyle that he so richly deserves. Just ask him!

As the title of this first volume implies, he is almost immediately derailed in these intentions by his capture into a home for the dissolution of fables. Being the type who is not generally fond of being forgotten, he immediately sets about getting out. From there, adventure, chaos, and some amount of comedy ensue. The exact amount depends mostly upon just how much you are either willing to accept Jack’s conceit that he really is the most important person anyone he meets will ever meet, or upon how much you’re willing to accept the authors’ backhanded irony within Jack’s conceit. I’m split about halfway down the middle, laughing with him and at him in equal measure. If you find him intolerably boorish (which is fair!) and annoying conceited (which is even moreso), then you’ll probably hate not just the book but the whole series. In which case, I hope the eventual crossover is not much different than when Jack was just one of the characters in the series and will require no other knowledge to follow along with. That would be unfair.

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

A couple-few years ago, I saw the musical performance of Wicked in Dallas. It was a little heavy-handed with its pro-PETA message, but entertaining for all of that, plus at the time we were under a tornado warning (no shit) and the power actually went out briefly mid-show. The chick who was playing Elphaba? Good lungs, as she was able to joke at the audience until the power came back up, and everyone could hear her. So you see.

Sometime not long afterwards, I picked up a copy of the book that inspired all that, also named Wicked. Then, as is often the case, some years later I have read it, and my reaction is extremely mixed. On the one hand, I’m a little surprised to have liked it, even though I couldn’t say why. I mean, I liked its derivative work well enough, right? But still, I went into it expecting not so much, but with enough interest to understand why all the fuss. Instead, I got a pretty neatly put together series of five stories that probably could have been about five different people, even though they are not. The styles differ wildly (my favorite was the second part, at school, which reminded me constantly of Jane Austen) and the portrayals of our main character differ as well, due mostly to extensive passage of time between each section. I wouldn’t want to see it in a lot of books, but I kind of approve of Maguire’s choice to disregard continuity, perhaps in an attempt to give his audience more insight into the central point he is making about passing judgment without very many facts?

Which, right, I suppose I shouldn’t ought to assume everyone knows about the book. It is, basically, the other side of the story of the Wizard of Oz, in which our wicked Witch, Elphaba, went to college with Glinda, joined political resistance against a tyrannical usurper who styled himself the Wizard of Oz, and was eventually brought low by one Dorothy who frankly had no idea what was going on around her and was everyone’s pawn at every turn. And like I say, it’s a pretty entertaining story, with a lot of interesting character voices and structural choices. So why am I ambivalent? Because, at some point in the story, after her political agitations but before the arrival of her destined nemesis, Elphaba starts to reflect upon her legacy and quickly to fixate upon it, which gives Maguire an excuse to start dealing with everything through the prism of Literature, and Theme, and Essay Questions. And if there’s one thing I cannot stand, it is the 20th Century tendency toward intentional art. People should ought to create what they want to see, not what they believe other people will consider important. And that’s the worst part: this book is something I wanted to see. It just lost its way, somewhere along that yellow brick road.

Fables: Wolves

Leave a reply

The very fact that I’m still reading Fables says[1] I’m predisposed to like it. Which makes it hard to reach any particular objectivity, eight volumes in. Still, the title helps indicate for anyone who may also be reading the series that they will probably enjoy this particular one. Because, really, Wolves? There’s no better way to hint that we’re back to what I at least consider the central part of the story: Bigby Wolf, Snow White, and the fruit of their relationship.

I no longer have a clear idea of where the plot may be going, but I’m less concerned about it than I was last time. Or maybe that’s because I got more Mowgli and Cinderella, just as I had requested! Certainly the part where the characters, good, evil, power-hungry, or indifferent, are universally well-drawn[2] and entertaining helps things, though.

[1] I know what you’ll be thinking as of my next book review, but there are special circumstances in that one case.
[2] Ha ha. But, yeah, both ways.

Omen

Omen_front_bgIf I had not read Outcast first, or[1] if it had been a different book, I would have liked Omen a lot better. Because, Omen was almost exactly the same book, it was just written a little more tightly. Two plot elements were identical, in fact. Luke Skywalker and his son are wandering the galaxy in search of non-Jedi Force-sensitives to learn from them and find a way to guarantee that he’ll know the next time one of the Jedi is slipping toward the Dark Side. And meanwhile, more and more Jedi are experiencing the Capgras delusion, wherein they are convinced that everyone they know has been replaced by perfect impostors. I’m saying, the prose was different but large swathes of the plot have literally not moved.

The only thing that is really new is that the extraneous third plot from the previous book has been replaced by dire rumblings of a new Sith ascendancy troubling the galaxy. Like, old school Sith from thousands of years ago, before even the Old Republic; a last remnant that has been cut off all this time, back from when they were a species more than a lifestyle. So that part was pretty cool, as was the prose I mentioned, really, and all in all it’s like I said at the start. I’d have liked this book a lot better if most of the events of it had not been duplicated from the inferior first book of the series.

Dear stable of Star Wars writers: it is okay to write fewer, more tightly plotted books to tell a story. Despite the fact that people will pay for nine books when only a three book series is needed, you should write three books anyway and consider the lost money a write-off on your soul. It will be worth it! …to your soul, I mean. Also, to me.

[1] More rationally, since this is a series.

Clash of the Titans (2010)

Leave a reply

I’ll say first what most everybody else is saying first, which is that the Clash of the Titans remake is actually more of a reimagining, in which there are a lot of visual elements that match the original film, but its plot and characters are really its own, with as little overlap as can reasonably be imagined considering the sheer number of visual milestones that are reached as the film progresses. Or, in shorter monkey speak: looks about the same, feels very different. And at the beginning, I was preparing in my head to put together a reasonably clever riff on how the movie was making a sincerely bold and certainly rare stand against the gods in our society. It would have inevitably been flavored with Battlestar Galactica, of course; you can’t mention Greek gods in a modern setting for a few years yet without that being an automatic comparison. But, y’know, good company and all. I even think I might have been able to conceal for a few sentences the reveal that I was talking about Greek religion in modern times rather than Judeo-Christian religion. It would have merited at least a chuckle.

The problem, you see, is that I can’t really do that because despite scripted grumblings over 75 percent of its length, the movie actually didn’t have the courage of its convictions; when push came to shove, it completely stopped being a diatribe against man’s reliance upon his gods and a paean to man’s ability to care well for himself, even with the gods ranged against him, and far more so if they would just leave us all alone. And that is the disappointment of the movie. If it had been content to be sound and fury, I would have been content to enjoy it on its own merits. But to, all sly references aside, start that diatribe which I think we all know validly works as a modern metaphor once you disregard that the gods being impotently raged against are Greek, and then right at the turning point of the movie when things are the darkest to unnecessarily cave in and undermine what had apparently been your entire message? It doesn’t make the movie any less loud, or pretty, or by-the-numbers humorous, but it makes it a lot less satisfying than mere popcorn would have been.

Warbreaker

2 Replies

It is hard to start a review when you are afraid of saying too much. It is harder still when you are both afraid of saying too much and also have very little idea about what to say. I can say that I’m glad I came to Warbreaker almost completely cold[1], and that this is exactly why I’m afraid of saying too much. I can say that Sanderson has created a third completely new magic system, and that it is really hard to explain even though it was not all that hard to understand. It has to do with an amalgam of color and life-force transference, anyway.

But what I can mainly say is that the story is fantastic. So many different viewpoint characters, each with wholly realized and differing viewpoints[2], failing to communicate the way that Jordan’s characters do but for completely understandable reasons and with real and immediate consequences that aren’t four books of mounting irritation from now. (To be clear, Warbreaker is standalone.) And they exist in a world rife with religious and political conflict that has no easy answers. Best of all, every important character out of at least six is in the midst of a crisis of identity whose solutions are poised to cut to the heart of generations of barely constrained turmoil. Also, there is a talking sword that I am prepared to say is the best talking sword character I’ve ever witnessed in the genre. In short: if you think Brandon Sanderson has been doing a good job with his career to date, this book is guaranteed not to suddenly make you change your mind.

[1] There is an unfortunate spoiler in one of the reviews on the back cover, all the more insidious because it’s not obviously a spoiler until you’re mostly through the book and realize that it hasn’t been revealed anywhere else.
[2] Which sounds redundant, but I dispute that it is.

Death: The Time of Your Life

1 Reply

There may be more Death-based graphic novels; the existence of an Absolute mega-edition like was created for Sandman and some other DC titles suggests so, but I’ve only ever seen two. And as of today, I’ve read the second one, so I guess I’ll just have to see what else pops up or else not worry about it. Which is not unlike how the pale gothy girl wearing the ankh expects me to live my life, I think; after all, it’s what I’ve got.

I kind of wish, though, that I either read Sandman more often than I have or else that I had eidetic memory, or that I had been obsessed with the series the way I was with the Wheel of Time during the ’90s, or really anything that would lead me to have good recall about the characters of Foxglove and… Jesus, I’ve forgotten her girlfriend’s name in the time it took me to start this review after finishing the book earlier today. That’s just sad, though unfortunately illustrative of my point. Because, you see, The Time of Your Life is mostly about the two of them and their son Alvie who has a suspicious anagram in his name, and also of course about the pale gothy girl with the ankh, who you may better know as Death.

It was a sad and sweet but probably more sad story about relationships and fame and sacrifice and of course death, and I liked it on its own merits, but I didn’t really like it on the merits of being a story about Death. She felt shoehorned in to provide a… well, deus ex machina can hardly apply if the being providing it is pretty well at a higher level of existence than gods are. But all the same, her only real point in the story was that she worked as a lever to break the logjam between waify singer/songwriter Foxglove and that girlfriend whose name I can’t remember, so that they can proceed with their lives (or not) one way or another, instead of continuing to circle around and around the same static relationship they were stuck in on page one. And even worse, Death provided this lever by way of an action so implausible that she even commented in the dialog that it’s the kind of thing she never does, right before doing it anyway, for no apparent reason. That could be a hint that she has taken more interest in the two characters than I apparently managed (her name is Hazel, if you are itching to know), but I couldn’t bring myself to take that hint. Instead, it was just an inexplicable oddity in, like I said, what could have been a pretty interesting story about a few side characters without ever including her.

Although, I admit it does seem like some member of the Endless should have probably been involved for it to really fit in the universe, familiar characters or not. It’s just, it’s plausible that if a character is going to behave inexplicably, Gaiman already wrote one who has that exact modus operandi. Y’know?

[1] It’s weird, or serendipitous, or merely coincidental, but I’m positive not ironic in any sense, that I’m listening to Who Killed Amanda Palmer? on vinyl as I write this. See, I bought it a few weeks ago while browsing a local record store for a few pickups, and finally unwrapped it right before I started on this. I had been going to write it anyway, just over Jon Stewart from last night instead, but the whim struck me, and there you go. And after I’d gotten about a sentence deep into the review, a line from the third track played out: “Nobody deserves to die, but you were awful adamant that if I didn’t love you, then you had just one alternative.” And the thing is, I feel like there might be a way to tease out a very close parallel between that line and the book, but only with spoilers, and anyway, it really would be coincidental, almost certainly nothing more. Even though I’m pretty sure Amanda Palmer wrote the introduction to that giant updated Death collection I mentioned, and Neil Gaiman wrote the copy on the back of Amanda Palmer’s album, and they’re engaged, and all of that. Sometimes, despite everything, it really is just a coincidence.
[2] How weird is it that there are two unreferenced footnotes in this entry?

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

1 Reply

Unless you live at the bottom of a very deep hole, you will no doubt have heard that Tim Burton is remaking Alice in Wonderland. Well, was remaking, I should say, as it came out last weekend. And I am here to tell you that it is a gorgeous movie. As usual, modern 3D is good even when it’s not particularly serving any purpose, and IMAX always looks and sounds about as good as you can imagine, but I’m not just talking about that, of course. Burton has a stylized signature art style that suffuses every movie he has made since at least Edward Scissorhands. It is slightly dark, in an almost proto-goth kind of way, even though he has sometimes made it darker than others. It is cartoonish without being cartoony. Basically, every world he creates looks like a fairy tale world; in this case, Wonderland already being a fairy tale world in its own right, Burton has pushed it through a glass darkly. Which, of course, is appropriate.

In addition to being so very pretty[1], the casting was consistently spot on. I mean, obviously the focus will be on Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, and I kind of thought he alternated between acceptable and annoying. But everyone else was pretty great. Crispin Glover as a gawkily tall bad guy, Alan Rickman as the snide caterpillar, Anne Hathaway as the ethereal White Queen, and then lots more. Perhaps best of all was Alice herself, though; in addition to managing to have girlish innocence despite now being 19 and looking really nice despite unreasonable ongoing damage to her wardrobe, she was a delight throughout the framing story (in which she is blindsided with a marriage proposal from some British lord or other), portraying the uncertainty, the yearning against the bonds the society was placing upon her, and so on. It would not have been Alice in Wonderland by any means, but I think I could have watched an entire movie built from that framing story.

Which is a pity, because the main story? Also was not quite Alice in Wonderland. The March Hare was as mad as… er, he was entirely crazy. And the Cheshire Cat was approximately perfect, plus all the casting I’ve already mentioned above. But the story… after complaining about Depp annoying me, I feel bad to say this, but the story was entirely too sane. It was linear, and standard, and about nothing much more than a hero needing to decide to be heroic. Which in itself is a movie I’ve watched many times before and will watch many times again, but placing characters from Lewis Carroll’s works into a movie does not make the movie suddenly about Wonderland. So I think I was ultimately more disappointed than it deserved, due to the misrepresentation, yes, but also because of how everything that was not the script[2] was so very well done.

[1] I should note that bloodhounds hit the uncanny valley of dogs for me; they looked perfect, but moved all wrong. Still, it’s nice that the technology keeps getting better.
[2] Well, except the dogs. And about 30% of Depp’s performance.