Tag Archives: romance

The Signal

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I’ve been sitting on this review for a goodly while now, and it’s just not getting any easier to proceed with. Some of the delays were valid, some were due to being busy, but still mostly I’ve just been stuck. Somehow or other I caught wind of this indie horror film, The Signal. Very limited release (two theaters in the area), interesting concept reminiscent of Cell by Stephen King, and some of the descriptions implied that it was also very funny. Which sounds like basically everything I’d want out of a movie. I even talked Jessica into going, though she claims to find such movies far too scary. (And yet she watched 28 Days Later. This is a dichotomy that warrants further consideration.)

So, one night in the thematically named city of Terminus, a staticky image appears on all of the televisions (which are turning themselves on), and staticky sounds emerge from all of the cellphones, landlines, and airwaves. And after a very short period of time, some people are affected. The short description is that they’re all going crazy, but from the characters that we got to spend time with, I’d say instead that they are all being amplified. Whatever primary emotion they are feeling, be it resentment, jealousy, fear, concern, most everything is being blown out of all proportions, such that people are wandering the halls and the streets, committing wanton murder. In the midst of this, we are presented with a love triangle between a woman, her husband, and her lover, which is an excellent use of the background space, particularly after the husband seems slightly unhinged even before any serious effects of the signal are being felt. The story is told in three parts, one from the perspective of each member of the triangle, which is potentially interesting. And it is written by three different writers, which is more or less disastrous. The first portion focuses on the fear and claustrophobia of both the external and internal situations, and was extremely well done. The second portion is a black comedy, and also extremely well done, except for how little it fits with the first act. And the finale is a surrealist nightmare which was possibly well done, except that it failed to match the previous two acts in a new and different way, as well as suffering from the modern short story’s flaw of going all confusing right at the end and allowing you to draw your own conclusions about What Really Happened. That choice is so far outside the horror genre that I have no choice but to be offended and rule the movie lame. Which is a pity, as prior to the last ten minutes, flawed or not, it had at least been constantly interesting.

Guilty Pleasures

My current book is kind of vampire porn. Less self-absorbed than an Anne Rice offering, less explicit than Vampire Vixens, the first Anita Blake novel is of the approximate quality of a decent Buffy novelization but rated PG-13 for adult themes. (So, a lot like Season 6, except for the part where Buffy novelizations are, as a rule, trashy.) The thing is, I heard that it turns into a real train wreck somewhere down the line, plus I have a soft spot for the undead as entertainment. So, here I am.

In an alternate 1990s where our hero raises zombies for a living, vampires are lobbying for the right to vote, and bachelorette parties can be held at the vampire strip club Guilty Pleasures, it’s easy to be jaded. But even an ex- vampire hunter can be caught by surprise when the police and the city’s master bloodsucker both want her to find a criminal who has been murdering very powerful vampires.

Will vampires be slain? Will there be existential angst? Will there be a variety of possible love interests? Will our heroine have skills that are incongruous with her appearance, thus causing people to constantly underestimate her? All this, and a promise of more zombies to come in future books. So that’s alright, then.

Cry No More

I got a book from my grandmother a few months ago, about a lady whose kid was stolen from her arms in Mexico, so she devoted her life to searching for missing kids / people. It’s all very predictable, in that you know basically what will happen and who the heartbroken lady will end up with within the first 30 pages. The rest is an exercise in drama!, with doses of mildly effective misdirection and a few helpings of romance novel porn to keep the attention. The story isn’t too bad, but unfortunately changes focus completely right at the end, wrapping up the mystery as neatly as a bow with too much haste and getting on to the emotional consequences.

The one thing I really don’t understand is the title, Cry No More, which seems to have no dramatic or particularly thematic connection with the rest of the story. (Well, okay, it might have a thematic connection with the last 30 pages or so, but since that part has no connection with what came before it, it’s hard for me to count that.)

So, it sat on my reading shelf for a while, as I plowed through a doorstop and a Pratchett and a I’d-verify-what-else-but-I’m-typing-this-in-notepad-due-to-no-real-internet-from-here. I’d planned to snag it after the first Pratchett, but I got in a hurry packing to get out of town early a few weekends ago, what with said grandmother being in the hospital, so I forgot it and ended up reading more Pratchett, as that was what was in the trunk. Which sucked, because she asked me if I had yet, and I had to sound like I was making up some lame excuse to placate her.

It’s funny, the things we feel guilty about. For not knowing she had died until the nurses came, even though I was holding her hand. Whether I read a book at request, or at least finished it in time to talk to her about it. And I genuinely wish I could, too, not just for the rose-tinted, shiny vision of some earnest conversation that would have made her happy. I really am curious what she wanted me to get out of it. I’m sure it wasn’t the porn, but I’m sure of little else. (I’m seriously here. There was a substantial amount of explicit hardening and penetrating going on. Very strange, even from a lady who thought Grand Theft Auto 3 was the funniest game she’d ever seen.) Now I won’t really ever know for sure, and that sucks.

I guess it’s strange that my symbol of loss for my grandmother, the one thing that I know I won’t ever know now, but I could have known if I’d tried harder, is about a book we both read. I’m glad that’s what it is, though, too, because it will remind me that we were closer in very fundamental ways than I would usually describe us as being. And that’s comforting to me.