Wisdom of Bookmonkey

Things I've Noticed: Clearing out the PVR can be pretty exciting

2012-01-27T07:35:00.000-08:00

So over the last couple weeks my wife and I have been deciding between our current cable/phone/internet provider and the competition. Both sides have put up a pretty good reason to either switch or stay, and in the end our choice works best for our needs (I hope), but an interesting side-project in all this is that we have been working for the last two weeks to empty our PVR.

The Personal Video Recorder (PVR) is in some ways like a VCR, but unlike the older machine, which could be programed to tape television at a certian tie, the PVR can be programmed to tape shows or complete series at any time they air. Like a show featuring Australian crime-fighting teenaged mermaids? Annoyed that it only airs at 2:15am? No problem, the PVR will tape that series until you have dozens and dozens of episodes backlogged on your system, stopping you from watching your current prime-time favourites!

Okay, so there are some bugs, but what the heck, all new technology needs to be better understood by the users so that they can access it more effectively.

Our PVR lists a percentage of total space used (rather than number of programs) and over the last two weeks we went from 89% to 5% (last nights episode of Eastenders and The Finder). Over the course of this week I've learned a lot things.

1) Some shows work better if you watch them in a smaller period of time, AMC's Hell on Wheels (10 episodes) was a pretty fun show to watch at two episodes a night, but I think it may have lost something for me if I simly watched it weekly.

2) High Definition (HD) shows take up a lot of space, and unless the show is visually striking (mostly Special Effects heavy shows) the need to see it in HD isn't really that great.

3) You (well, I) feel a great sense of accomplishment when I get the PVR down to zero, like I've defeated a boss in a video game.

Bookmonkey vs. PVR

BOOKMONKEY WINS!!!

Genre Character of the Week: Samuel Vimes

2012-01-24T16:55:00.000-08:00

One of my favourite times of the year is in January, when I go looking through all my lists to figure out which new books by my favourite authors are due out over the next year. In 2011 I had a list of six books I was looking forward to above all others, all of which except two ended up as reviews on my blog (the first missing title was Dead Reckoning, by Charlaine Harris, but as it was book 11 of an ongoing series, I couldn’t figure out how to review it without giving away massive spoilers). The final book was Terry Pratchett’s Snuff, featuring my favourite character in his Discworld stories, Samuel Vimes.

A few years ago I reviewed Matthew Scott’s Thraxas, a novel which paired the hard-boiled detective novel with a fantasy setting. In Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, the author has satirized and parodied so many types of stories with his own fantasy world I wouldn’t know where to begin (but I suppose if you want to, you should start with The Colour of Magic, which parodies everything from classic fantasy to tourism and even Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser), but for me my personal favourite novels are his cop stories, which he calls his City Watch novels (including, Guards! Guards!, Men at Arms, Feet of Clay, Jingo, The Fifth Elephant, Night Watch, Thud!, and Snuff) and a major part of this is the captain of the city watch, Samuel Vimes.

Now, a huge part of what I like about Sam is his growth throughout the series of books he features in, and like one of my favourite SF Genre characters, Miles Vorkosigan, Sam does an awful lot over the course of these stories. But looking back at his character in his first book,Guards! Guards!, Sam comes across as a good cop, trying to balance his own views about the importance of law and order with his experience in leading the city watch of Ankh Morpork, a wretched hive of scum and villainy if there ever was one.

In the end, he’s a decent guy trying to do his best in a less than great situation, something we can all aspire to.

Book Review: The Five

2012-01-22T15:36:00.000-08:00

It’s not a secret that Robert McCammon is one of my favourite authors. Whether he’s scaring me with novels like Mine, or Stinger, giving me a sense of wonder with a story like Boy’s Life, or simply looking at history from a different (and sometimes fantastic) point of view like the Matthew Corbett novels or The Wolf’s Hour, I know when I pick up a new McCammon novel, I’m in for some fine storytelling.

The Five might be my favourite book of 2011.

It’s a little hard to tell right now, as I just finished it this morning, but the story, which follows a rock and roll band called The Five on a nightmarish road trip through America creeped me out, made me feel sympathy for all of its characters (even the bad guys) and did the amazing trick of being a book about music that had me feeling the way I do when I hear great bands play. The band felt real to me, in fact, overall I can’t think of any character’s who came out as two-dimensional in the story. It was really great, in both the big thrill and quiet character development moments.

In the end, the book does an amazing job of being a dark fantasy novel about rock and roll that shows the transcendent power of music.

Seriously, a great read.

Thing I've noticed: Sometimes I need to weed my television

2012-01-19T21:28:00.000-08:00

One of the most underrated jobs in the library field is that of weeding, that is the process of removing books and other materials to make space for new ones. I think the reason for this is that at the most basic levels of library work, we kind of want to be archivists – we want to acquire new materials and never let go of old ones, because what if someday we need that title? What if some future student, or kid or just a regular reader comes into our building looking for a title and when they don’t find it they decide to leave and spend the rest of their days complaining about how useless the library is?

Here’s the thing, weeding is necessary to make space. Sometimes books are ridiculously simple to weed (computer manuals, legal texts, etc.), but eventually you need to make the hard choices and decide which books you own need to go and which need to stay.

Last week my wife and I decided to weed our viewing habits.

First off, a little context, most nights we watch about three hours of television (not including commercials, which we usually skip past); a show with our kids and then a couple hours for ourselves. Depending these are current shows, TV shows on DVD or sometimes movies, depending on our mood and the fact that we now use a PVR (Personal Video Recorder) means that we aren’t locked into any specific time to watch any show (the concept is called Timeshifting in Communications Studies and a great example of it is to think back to your viewing habits before you had a VCR if you are my age and realize that a lot of what you watched came down to what was on, rather than what you wanted to watch).

There are three good times a year to do some TV series weeding, these being late August, early January and late May – or if you will the times when current series are about to begin or end.

We try to have a one-to-one trade policy. If there is a new series coming out (such as Alcatraz) we look at the length of the show (1 hour) and try to find a comparable show we are already watching that maybe we have been losing interest in (such as Persons of Interest) this way we keep our evenings free for other stuff and can be reasonable sure that the series we watch are actually the series we want to watch. Sometimes we’ll continue to tape a show for a few weeks until we decide whether or not we’ll want to go back (for example we just started taping 30 Rock, so Whitney is currently on notice – we’ll tape both for the next two weeks, but then a choice will be made).

I know this may seem like over thinking our viewing habits, but considering that I enjoy watching television, why shouldn’t I take a little time out of my life to make sure I’m enjoying it the best I can?

Genre Character of the Week: The Duke De Richleau

2012-01-17T20:14:00.000-08:00

Okay folks, we’re going old-school this week with one of my favourite characters from the Hammer Horror films of the ‘60s, The Duke De Richeleau (pictured left) from the 1968 film,The Devil Rides Out, as played by Christopher Lee.

In the film, the Duke is called to the south of England to visit the son of a friend and upon his arrival discovers that young Simon may be involved with Satanists. The young man’s home has all the trappings of Satanism, and as the Duke is something of an expert in the field, he and a small group spend the rest of the film attempting to save their young friend and stop this evil group as well as the Devil himself.

Here’s what I love about the character; he is an expert in Satanism and the occult. There isn’t really any backstory given for why he is so well versed in such a strange area of study, but his calm and steady demeanor allow him to put up a great fight against the ultimate evil. Christopher Lee (who scared me as Dracula, Frankenstein and the Mummy in earlier Hammer Horror Films) plays the good guy in this film and honestly he’s pretty great.

Add to that the fact that the screenplay was written by one of my favourite authors, Richard Matheson, and that the story was based on a book by Dennis Wheatley (British a writer of thrillers and occult novels from the 1930s through the 1970s) and that this was actually the second of eleven novels focusing on the Duke and I’ve got to say, the film is a treat and I’m really looking forward to checking out these other novels.

Book Review: Bug Jack Barron

2012-01-15T19:25:00.000-08:00

As someone who has spent the last four years getting a degree focusing on media and communications studies, reviewing a science fiction novel focused on a media personality in a dark future may be a troubling prospect, what with all the bias and educational background and all. Luckily for you my dear readers, I will have none of those problems.

Just in case you were worried.

I LOVED THIS BOOK!

Here’s the thing, for the last few years I’ve been working my way through David Pringle’s SF The Top 100 books published in English from 1945 – 1985 and although I loved the books of the ’40s and ‘50s, a lot of the stuff in the (especially late) ‘60s just came across as flowery/free-form poetry that took forever to make its point and often could have been cut way down. But now, after reading my Moorcock and Burroughs and Ellison I come across this book and all of that writing style suddenly came together into something that I just loved.

In the world of Bug Jack Barron (by Norman Spinrad), Jack hosts a massively popular television show (think a mixture of Oprah, Larry King and mid-nineties Jerry Springer) and is considered to be the voice of the people. In reality his persona and show are carefully crafted products, working to establish the perfect balance between sensationalism and legal tap-dancing. Jack is focused on making cash and although years ago he was something of a rebel, these days he simply grooms that image to play better to the audience. Inevitably he gets involved with a story bigger than anything he could have imagined.

The story itself focuses on roles of the media, ethical dilemmas and the concept of immortality. It’s a lot of fun and although the style of prose takes a while to get used to, it is definitely worth your time.

A Great read.

Things I've noticed: I need to read some recent Science Fiction

2012-01-12T20:51:00.000-08:00

Today I finished reading the 1969 novel Bug Jack Barron byNorman Spinrad (I'll do the review on Monday) and was happy to find an afterward written by Michael Moorcock. As I worked my way through his five page essay on the book, he mentioned a large number of popular science fiction books written in the late sixties, and I realized that over the last couple of years I had read 95% of them.

This isn't actually a problem as the late '60s had all sorts of great Science Fiction being published. It's just that as I was congratulating myself for being so familiar with the books written in the decade before I was born I realized that with the exception of books written by the authors I follow and a couple recent Hugo winners suggested to me by my BFF Mike, I haven't really read any of the great science fiction that has been published in the last ten years.

In a way I feel like the music lover in 1969 who says "I'm a huge folk and rock music lover, and am totally familiar with all the classics of yesteryear; no I didn't go see that Woodstock thing earlier this year, even though it was playing just down the road, but let me tell you all the great things that were happening fifteen years ago."

Okay, not exactly like that, as '50s rock and roll (like '60s Science Fiction) is definitely some of the best, but mostly I mean that I need to get into some stuff that is still available in regular bookstores.

So I guess I'm going to try to swap out every month - first a science fiction classic, then something written after my youngest daughter was born (1997), and hopefully this will get me a little more balance in my reading.

Genre Character of the Week: Stargirl

2012-01-10T19:59:00.000-08:00

Last month for one of my book clubs I read the first 11 volumes of the Justice Society of America, which ran from 1999 to 2006 (considering the majority of these characters started out in the 1940’s, I use the term first very loosely), and although the team had a lot of members joining and leaving throughout the run, it did re-introduce me to this week’s genre character, Stargirl, aka Courtney Whitmore.

I was first introduced to the character in James Robinson’s Starman, where she comes across as kind of an arrogant jerk, totally taking the work of her partner (and Stepfather) for granted and basically coming across as a very selfish teen. In the end of Starman (mild spoiler), Jack Knight passes on his Cosmic Staff to Courntey and she changes her name from the Star-Spangled Kid to Stargirl. At the time I readStarman, I couldn’t help wondering, why her? I mean, she doesn’t really come across as even mildly heroic in the series and I couldn’t follow Jack’s logic as to why she should take up where he left off.

Luckily, after reading the Justice Society of America series, I now have a much better idea. Here’s what I really liked about Courtney; she is learning as she goes along, she’s not afraid to admit when she’s wrong, and honestly, she is the only superhero I can think of who wears braces for her teeth. Her relationships throughout the run on JSA run from friendships to romances (and specifically one of the best uses of the “but you don’t know him like I do” excuses I’ve ever come across in genre fiction) and unlike a lot of the other heroes, you actually get to see her mature through the series.

Honestly, a pretty cool superhero.

First Impressions: The Boys

2012-01-08T20:43:00.001-08:00

Like the film Super, I’d been looking at the Garth Ennis comic book series The Boys for a while now. Here was my basic problem – I really enjoyed my first experience with Garth Ennis (Preacher is a really violent, but fun romance with vampires that sits pretty high in my favourite comic book series), my second experience was his run on The Punisher for Marvel comics, which I really liked at first, and then seemed to quickly devolve into a simple horrible-villain-is-horrible-then-the-Punisher-shows-up-and-kills-him cycle that I got pretty tired of pretty quick.

The a few years back The Boys came out, and as I was actually shying away from superhero comics at the time (novels however, like Superfolks by Robert Mayer still made it on to my reading lists and thank goodness, because that book is amazing!) I really didn’t have any interest in checking out some kind of (literal) hero-bashing story filled with morally bankrupt superpowered jerks.

Then in December I had the chance to check out the first few trade paperback collections of the title from my local library, and as I had a bunch of time I thought, Why not?

So, what did I think of the first few collections of The Boys?

Well, they were hyper-violent and full of adult content, but so was Preacher, they did indeed involve many issues where our "heroes" beat the ever-loving crap out of their world's Super Heroes; the stories were filled with concepts and ideas that made me sad or upset with the idea of a world wherein super powered folks weren't really doing anything for the common good, then I started getting angry, and you know what - that is kind of the point.

The main characters are the last line of a defence in a world where super-heroes accidentally kill civilians and then have the victim's families bought off by lawyers. The whole point is that you (the reader) are supposed to be disturbed and angry about what these people in positions of power are doing, and then realize that someone needs to stop them. Like Preacher, the series does have a romance angle at it's centre and yes, you end up caring for the main characters.

Is this a title for everyone? No. Is it interesting? Yes, and as a free read does it work for me? Yup. Although I wouldn't own the series, I am interested in seeing where the creators are going with it and as long as I can keep reading it from my local library, I'll keep following the series.

Things I’ve noticed: Sometimes violence in videogames can mess with your head

2012-01-05T20:43:00.000-08:00

This morning I was talking to my nineteen-year-old daughter about the game Infamous. I wrote a review of it earlier this week and she is currently working through the game herself. She explained to me that at one point in the game while stopping a prison break, she witnessed one of the villainous dustmen shoot a police officer with a rocket launcher and although she had been knocking out dustmen up to that point, she made a special effort to kill this one.

It’s funny, as neither character were actually real people (sorry ReBoot – maybe they were, but for the purposes of this post let’s assume they weren’t) there should not have been any specific reason for her to target this one villain over any others, but I suppose the fact that as the main character in the game, it was within her power to theoretically stop the villain before he blew up the police officer, the least she could do was get revenge.

I guess that is one of the biggest draws for me when it comes to video games; unlike books, movies and TV shows, video games are the one medium that let me (the player) take direct action and an effect on the game world. This was the same draw for me into the world of Role-Playing Games when I was younger. Whether I was a Fighter, a Vampire or a cyborg-dwarf Shadowrunner, I could do things in the game that would have consequences.

It’s funny, but in a way I feel pretty good about my daughter’s reaction; I mean, sure she brutally beat a (virtual) guy and then threw a grenade on him for good measure, but the part I’m talking about is the fact that when she saw something that she found unacceptable, she did something about it. It makes me feel (virtually) proud.

Genre Character of the Week: The Crimson Bolt

2012-01-03T17:52:00.001-08:00

I had heard about the movie Super a few years ago and as I’ve enjoyed the films of James Gunn whenever I’ve caught them (Slither is my current favourite, but Lollilove had a nice mockumentary-feel throughout) so the idea of a super-hero film starring Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office) sounded like something right up my alley.

A number of obstacles soon started to form however; it didn’t play in any of my local theatres, and review after review of the film left me feeling less enthusiastic about the film. The movie came out on DVD earlier this year, and it sat on the shelves at my local department store for $25 – which is a little steep for me to purchase a movie without watching it first. Even my online DVD-rental place didn’t have it. Then, while grocery shopping with my BFF Mike last week, I found it in my local Safeway for $5, so I snapped it up. Which leads to this week’s genre character, Frank D’Arbo, aka The Crimson Bolt.

Frank (played by Rainn Wilson) is a short-order cook, married and a pretty simple guy; he loves his wife and one of his favourite memories is of helping the police. One day his wife leaves him for a jerk named Jacques played by Kevin Bacon and Frank breaks down.

Finding inspiration in a Christian-themed super hero show called The Holy Avenger (played by Nathan Fillion) who saves children from a devil with the power of Christ, Frank decides to become a superhero, after all, in the words of the Holy Avenger

"All it takes to become a superhero is the choice to fight evil"

So Frank sets out to stop crime, and the movie follows him as he stumbles and bumbles his way through his new life. Personally, I enjoy the fact that the violence in the film is very realistic and does a good job of showing just how vicious Frank can be with criminals. I found that the similarly-themed film Kick-Ass sort of glorified the violence that the main character caused, and I felt this film did a better job of dealing with the themes of religion, self-worth and redemption better than the other.

Frank comes across as a simple guy pushed too far. He is not unlike Michael Douglas in Falling Down (one of my favourite non-genre films) in that he wants to live in a world where right and wrong obvious and separate. Although the film won’t be for everyone, I actually ended up liking it and yes, it will stay in my DVD collection.

Game Review: Infamous

2012-01-01T20:30:00.000-08:00

As I've been off on vacation for the last couple of weeks, I was able to finish my most recent game for the PS3, Infamous. The game is a sandbox-style game (wherein you can follow a main story, do side missions or simply explore the environment) and follows a bicycle messenger named Cole MacGrath who begins to develop super powers after being at the epicentre of a massive explosion.

The game itself was a lot of fun, as the explorations through the city showed me a lot of really neat environments and allowed me to interact with the cities population. Actually one of the best parts of the game, in my opinion, was the ability to be a jerk or a decent guy throughout and have your choice actually affect the gameplay. Playing as a good guy, I eventually had a lot of people helping out in my battles and being friendly to me overall. I'm looking forward to coming back to the game at a later date and trying it out as an evil guy, so the replay offered by the game is actually quite high.

The graphics were fun, the story was engaging, and although there were a few glitches (mostly falling through parts of the environment that should not have let me fall), overall this was a really fun play. I'm excited about checking out the sequel as well, but next up for me is the sequel to one of my favourite games for the PS3 so far, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. This new title, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.

Things I've Noticed: 2011 was a good year for genre

2011-12-29T21:02:00.000-08:00

Happy New Years Everyone (a little early, but my next post would be a little late).

As we move towards the end of 2011, rather than looking forward to the new genre films and stories of 2012, I want to take a quick moment and look back at my favourite stuff from 2011.

In Fantasy, 2011 was definitely the year of Game of Thrones, from those with the cash to get HBO I heard a lot of great things about the series, but I'll have to wait until it's available on DVD to make a judgement of my own. Personally I'll always think of 2011 Fantasy as the year of Thor, whether in the comic series I read in the spring, or in the motion picture. In addition, a special mention for Bill Willingham's Peter & Max, a tie-in novel to his comic book series Fables which I loved, and surprisingly a nod to the Gallager Pub trilogy of romance novels by Nora Roberts that I read for one of my book clubs (romance is definitely not a genre of choice for me) and totally fell in love with.

In Horror, 2011 was my year to understand the remimagining of slasher films that has kept horror in the cinema for the last decade. Looking at the books I most enjoyed, Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead, Tim Seeley's Hack/Slash, and a number of non-fiction works about the genre definitely stood out, and in movies my favourite two were both horror comedies, Fright Night and Tucker & Dale vs. Evil.

Finally in Science Fiction I found a lot in comic book series that totally amazed me; Starman by James Robinson may perhaps sit as my favourite superhero comic to date, and a series I just started in December Elephantmen by Richard Starkings was a stand out as a wonderfully drawn and intriguing look at a future in which human-animal hybrids are raised to be warriors. Although they came out earlier, 2011 was the year I read The Hunger Games series and out of new stories, Stephen King's 11/22/63 was a personal favourite as well. Also Dead Space gives me hopes for the sub-genre of Zombies in Space.

So there you go, my 2011 in genre stories, television and film. Thanks for taking the time to check out my blog and I'll see you all next year.

Bookmonkey

Gene Character of the Week: Dr. John Watson

2011-12-27T16:39:00.000-08:00

On Christmas Day my family and I continued our yearly tradition of seeing a matinee showing at our local theatre of whatever tickles our fancy. In years past we've seen Sherlock Holmes, Gulliver's Travel's, and Yes Man (Which involved a pretty awkward scene to sit through with my two teenaged daughters). This year we saw Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, and that brings me to this week's genre character, Dr. John Watson.

Although not my favourite Watson (that would be Martin Freeman in the BBC series Sherlock), the Watson in these two most recent motion pictures based on the character is a lot of fun. Yes, he does punch, kick, and shoot much more than any other version of Watson I've come across, but at the same time, actor Jude Law does a wonderful job of showing us a character trying desperately to be a responsible doctor and husband who just can't shake his BFF Sherlock (like a fungus, Sherlock kind of grows on you).

The film was full of action and some pretty spectacular effects, and I would be remiss not to mention Jared Harris as Moriarty in a particularly chilling performance. The film was fun, impressed both my wife and my teenaged daughters and did a great job of mixing action, thrills and laughs.

What did you get in your stocking?

2011-12-25T15:31:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas everyone from all of us at Wisdom of Bookmonkey (and by us I mean me - and my lovely wife for giving me a few minutes to bang out a quick Christmas post).

As a kid there were three basic staples when it came to my Christmas Stocking - Mandarin Orange, Socks and Underwear. As I've gotten older and more genre enthused however, the contents of my stocking has changed.

This year I got an expansion set for the Zombies! board game (a fun little zombie themed party game that works quite well if you are looking for something horror themed that lasts about an hour), as well as a Zombie desk calendar. Past that I got the standard mandarin orange, as well as a Terry's Chocolate Orange and some underwear (some things never change).

Anyway, as that is about all I have time for, just a quick question - What did you get in your stocking this year?

Things I’ve Noticed: Video games really want you to stay out of the water

2011-12-22T18:03:00.001-08:00

For the last couple weeks I’ve been playing the PS3 game Infamous, wherein you play a bicycle courier who was granted super-powers after being at the epicenter of a huge explosion. Given powers over electricity, you can either run around the city as a good guy or as an infamous force of terror. I decided to play it good, but I’ll probably revisit the game in a few months and let my inner baddie out.

One thing the game did get me thinking about however, was just how common it is for games to deny the player access to the ocean. Some games (Tomb Raider, Uncharted, and God of War all come to mind) have many underwater levels, but for the most part the ocean is off limits for the player to explore. Put simply, if the game doesn’t allow water exploration, there is a lot less you have to design.

A lot of games have no reason for this at all (When Altaiir in the first Assassins Creed game falls into the ocean he simply dies (amazing assassin –yes, as good a swimmer as a five-year-old -no, or when Tommy Vercetti in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City hits the ocean it’s also lights out – which makes me wonder why he moved to a city with an ocean on three sides of it) but there are a few games that are actually pretty clever in explaining why you just can’t take a dip.

Bookmonkey’s Top Three excuses for why your character can’t go in the water.

#3 Electrocution (Infamous)

Sometimes your strength can also be your weakness; in Infamous Cole MacGrath has the ability to manipulate electricity to do all sorts of things: hurl lightning, throw objects around, even heal the sick, but the downside of having electricity-based powers is that when electricity touches water – you’re gonna hurt.

#2 Ancient Family Curse (The Castlevania Series)

All right, I’ll admit that this ridiculous reasons for vampire hunter Simon Belmont (who is cursed so that he can’t touch water) – would obviously leaving him dead of dehydration in a matter of days) but honestly, while playing the games I’m so focused on killing vampires and other creatures of the night that the idea of an ancient family curse works just fine for me.

#1 CHOMP! (Spore)

A few years ago I got my wife the game Spore; a kind of super civilization-style game. You start by playing a micro-organism, then evolve into a creature, then control the creatures tribe, then it’s nation, it’s civilization and eventually travel through space. As a creature in the second stage of the game, you wander around on an island (or continent) dealing with other creatures and getting more evolved, but if you go out into the ocean, a giant sea-creature will simply come out of the water and eat you. In the end, you can’t get much simpler than that.

P.S. A quick side note, one of my newer favourite blogs, Renaissance Dork posted this link to the new trailer for The Hobbit, now if it could only shoot me forward a year so I could see the movie!!!

Genre Character of the Week: Corin

2011-12-20T17:33:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I watched the newest version of Conan the Barbarian, and although I'm still definitely a classic Conan fan, I was happy to find my next genre character of the week, Conan's father; Corin.

Played by one of my favourite actors, Ron Perlman, who I've loved in everything from Hellboy to Cronos and am currently in awe of in Sons of Anarchy, Corin is a small role, but basically gives the audience the understanding of where Conan comes from. Personally, I found the newer film to be a little lacking in story and character arc as compared to the original but I will say that the early scenes with Corin were some of my favourites. Living in a brutal world, Corin does his best to be fair to all members of his tribe as well as show his son his love. Honestly, it was better than I was expecting from the film.

Although I wouldn't necessarily own the movie, I would definitely recommend it for a fun afternoon (and also my teenaged daughters were quite fond of Jason Momoa (the actor playing Conan), but I'm not really sure if it was for his acting.

Book Review: Hack/Slash Omnibus volume 1

2011-12-19T05:02:00.000-08:00

Have you ever had a book that you always seem to be passing in the book stores and never get around to checking out? Month after month you keep passing by the same shelf and keep thinking, “That book looks kind of cool, If only I had more time and cash I might pick it up.”

For me, that title was Tim Seeley’s Hack / Slash Omnibus Vol. 1. Looking at the cover (Pictured Right), and the book itself, here was everything I knew; our main character was a girl, the comic promised a significant amount of violence (Although the beheaded clown on the cover is a bit of a bait and switch) and, according to the back cover it was optioned as a movie, had The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman as a fan (and doing a cameo), and seemed to be based on the slasher movies I grew up with (Halloween, Friday the 13^th, Nightmare on Elm Street, etc.).

It actually wasn’t until my BFF Mike let me borrow his copy of Lovebunny & Mr. Hell (an excellent, if uneven comic book itself), that I decided to give this book a try. Lovebunny & Mr. Hell is a basic super-hero buddy story, between a sidekick who wants to go out on her own (after she was dumped by her boyfriend/super hero partner) and a horrible Cthulhu-inspired demon as they fight crime, create a reputation for themselves and quickly become best friends. Although the art was sometimes a little too exploitive for me (you see a lot of underwear), the sense of humour was a lot of fun and led me to see what else the author had in store for me.

The Hack/Slash Omnibus volume 1, introduces you a world wherein slasher killers run rampant have their own mythology and also have two Dexter-esque slasher-slashers hunting them down one by one. Cassandra Hack and Vlad are the daughter of a slasher and a deformed Sloth (from The Goonies)-like giant who travel across the country trapping slasher killers and stopping them, for good. The series works sort of like an ongoing series of the film Scream, wherein the characters are aware of the rules and are also trapped in a slasher-style story. Broke most of the time, Cassie and Vlad travel all over the place and get the job done in fight sequences that are both action-packed and gruesome (or sometimes funny). The artwork is a little up and down in places and the pacing definitely gets better as you go along. My personal favourite two stories?

Trailers – a series of movie-trailers involving potential adventures for Cassie and Vlad (I love the one set in space), and

Hack/Slash vs. Chucky – wherein Cassie is forced to partner up with the killer from theChild’s Play franchise to save Vlad. The artwork is great, they did an amazing job of getting the right “voice” for Chucky and the story definitely left me wanting more.

This series will definitely end up in my collection.

Things I've Noticed: The Hold Queue can be a good thing

2011-12-15T17:30:00.000-08:00

Although it was only a few weeks ago that I was complaining about how my public library sent me too many of my holds, I’m now sitting in a large number of hold queues; basically I will be lucky if any of the 23 items I am waiting for will be available before January.

So with a whole bunch of time on my hands (the next three books I’ve scheduled myself to read are all loaners from friends who I won’t be seeing for a few days) I’ve decided to dig into my comic books. Having read Starman last month, and reading Justice Society of America for this month, it’s time for me to check out a few titles I’ve been meaning to get around to reading.

Over this week I’ve read Joe Hill’s Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft, Things Undone by Shane White, Tim Seeley’s Hack/Slash Omnibus #1 (I’ll have a book review of it up on Monday), a bunch of Hellboy titles and some Astro City as well. The best part is I can read a couple a day and get a nice dose of great genre fiction.

In the end, I’m always looking forward to my library holds, but spacing like this allows me to check into a lot of my own stuff, so it works out for everyone.

Genre Character of the Week: Jennifer Corvino

2011-12-14T04:38:00.001-08:00

Last week my friend Dr. Teeth leant me some pretty cool comics (so far) and a movie starring a 13-year-old Jennifer Connelly called Phenomena. The movie actually kind of has to be seen to be believed, but I’ve got to say that after watching it I was easily able to find my next genre character of the week, Jennifer Corvino.

Jennifer (played by Jennifer Connelly) is the teen daughter of a film celebrity who has just been sent to a private school for girls in Switzerland. Unfortunately for Jennifer, this is happening in a film written, directed and produced by Dario Argento; the guy who ten years earlier created the film Suspiria, about a young girl sent to a private school in Switzerland, and all sorts of horrible things occur throughout.

Like the heroes of many genre stories, Jennifer has both a talent and a bit of a handicap; she can empathically communicate with insects and she’s a sleepwalker (I didn’t say the two things had to be balanced out). Jennifer is also perhaps the only person who may be able to solve a rash of serial killings going on in the area. (As a father of two teenage daughters myself, I think I might ask any potential school about serial killers in the area who are attacking their students BEFOREI enrolled my kids, but hey, I’m crazy that way).

The movie has all sorts of concepts and ideas running through it, a sort of “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks approach” that I quite appreciated. My favourite five (with only mild spoilers)

1) A Narrator who only speaks once, for about 30 seconds and is then never used again in the entire film.

2) A girl who can communicate with insects

3) A Chimpanzee plays a significant role in the film

4) The soundtrack is actually pretty good – I found myself bopping to the music throughout

5) The kindly old man helping Jennifer through the film is played by Donald Pleasance, who I first saw in Prince of Darkness and loved in Halloween.

If you can get a hold of the film, it is pretty fun (although it is horror, so be aware there is some graphic violence). Is it my favourite Jennifer Connelly film? No, that’s still a toss-up betweenLabyrinth and Dark City, but it is definitely worth the watch.

Book Review: A Stir of Echoes

2011-12-11T20:37:00.000-08:00

Like most people, I’ve seen a lot of movies based on books well before I ever got around to the novel, if at all. Often the film ruins any exciting plot twists you might have found in the book so there is even less of a reason to pick up the original work. But sometimes…

A few years back while in Germany I read Robert Bloch’s Psycho, a book that has become one of the most famous films ever made. Yes there is a secret ending, yes it is incredible, no I will not spoil it for the six or seven people out there who don’t know (it is that cool), so you would think that the original novel would have little to offer a reader who is “in the know.” To my surprise, that book was fantastic, scaring me almost all the way through, and surprising me in story elements that would not have translated well into the medium of film.

Two years ago I read Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, and the same thing occurred; even though I had seen the Polanski film at least five times, the book brought a wicked sense of humour to the material that I was not expecting and totally enjoyed.

This brings me to my current book, A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson. Like most people, I saw the 1999 Kevin Bacon film first (and yes I’ve won more than a few games of six degree of Kevin Bacon using this film or Tremors as a link; interesting note, Serious SDoKB players consider it a cheat to connect through star-studded films like JFK or Apollo 13). It’s kind of funny actually, as at the time the film came out there was a sort of backlash against it, saying it was basically a rip-off of The Sixth Sense, which is funny, because the book is based off of a novel published forty years earlier in 1958.

The book is actually a lot of fun, definitely helped by the fact that I saw the movie more than a dozen years ago so the story seems a little fresher. Add to that the fact that the victim and the killer are different in the novel than in the movie, and you end up with a story even someone who just saw the movie could still enjoy today.

This is the six Richard Matheson novel I’ve read in the last half year (the others were Someone is Bleeding, Fury on Sunday, Woman, I Am Legend, The Incredible Shrinking Man) and I love reading any authors work in order of publication because I get to see them grow as an artist. The book is quite good, and makes me want to go back and check out the movie again.

Things I've Noticed: Sometimes backstory is overrated

2011-12-08T21:07:00.000-08:00

Right now I’m reading the Justice Society of America comic book series, which started in 2006 under James Robinson (Starman) and David Goyer (Batman Begins, and also The Crow: City of Angels, which was the movie my wife and I saw on our first date) and after Robinson left would be written by Geoff Johns.

The thing is, the Justice Society was pretty much one of the first major super-hero teams, with stories published as far back as the 1940s, so there is a lot of continuity going on here. I’m reading the series for one of my book clubs, and before I started reading it, I read the 80 issues of James Robinson’s Starman (which I wrote about here) and was then told it might be worth my while to read the 50 issue run of Infinity Inc., as there were many crossovers and story arcs which start in the earlier series and play out in the JSA I’m currently reading.

I did end up reading Starman, as I owned the entire series and was looking for an opportunity to read them, but I decided against Infinity Inc. before starting the JSA. Mostly it came down to a lack of time – I was both finishing my first course for my Masters of Library Studies degree and was enthralled with the PS3 game Dead Space (the ending by the way – very cool!). So I figured I’d just try to read JSA on its own and see how much of it made sense.

Twenty issues in and so far I’m doing pretty good. I’m glad I read Starman before I started this, as the earliest issues were written by the same author so I recognized many characters and settings that might have slipped past me, but otherwise I’m doing pretty good. I may not necessarily know who all these heroes are, but there is enough description in the series to allow me to understand the story and invest in the characters.

A few years back I wrote about how I was nervous any time I tried a new series that I would require a lot of back story to appreciate the stuff I had access to, but you know what.

Sometimes you don’t really need that much back story, just trust that the story you’re reading will get you through.

Genre Character of the Week:Colonel Mack Tavernor

2011-12-06T18:29:00.000-08:00

Over the last few days I’ve been reading the 1969 novel The Palace of Eternity by Bob Shaw, a science fiction novel taking place on the planet Mnemosyne (an artist’s colony) and taking place during a war with a strange alien race called the Syccans. Our main character (and our genre character of the week) is Colonel Mack Tavernor.

Tavernor is introduced to the reader as a repair man living in a colony of artists, musicians, and poets. He is 49 years old, and keeps many of the planets indigenous creatures in his home as pets. Throughout the novel we learn of his childhood (he was a lone survivor of a planet-wide Syccan attack at age eight) and his military career, as well as the events leading to his current situation.

The novel has a lot of obvious parallels with later SF books, namely Ender’s Game, and Falling Free (from my point of view), and Tavernor is definitely one of my personal favourite kind of genre characters; the working-Joe just trying to mind his own business and live a quiet life who gets swept up in something huge.

I don’t want to go into too many spoilers of the novel, but trust me, Mack’s journey is a pretty major one, and it had me intrigued, excited and honestly shocked at various points throughout. Although the book may require you to make a trip to your local used-book store, it is definitely worth the trip.

Book Review: Sixkill

2011-12-04T20:42:00.000-08:00

Author Robert B. Parker passed away in January of 2010 (which I wrote about here) and since then I’ve slowly but surely been working my way through the remaining books he wrote during his lifetime. On Friday I finished Sixkill, his final novel and honestly, it was a little bitter-sweet.

The story features his main protagonist (Spenser – a Boston Private Investigator) attempting to solve the murder of a young girl who was found dead in a hotel with a movie star named Jumbo Nelson. Like all of his books, I found it engaging, full of action and great one-liners. For me, these novels work best as a character study of the main character. Spenser sits for me as one of my favourite detectives in fiction (the others include Brother Cadfael, Sherlock Holmes, and Miles Vorkosigan) as he comes across as a bit of thug, but at the same time has one of the most straight-forward views I’ve ever come across in fiction. If there is a problem, he works to solve it, if he can’t solve it directly; he sits around and makes trouble until there is something he can do.

It’s funny, but as I was heading through the last few chapters of the book I kept taking pauses (I was reading on the bus and would wait until the bus made its next stop), I was really enjoying the story, but knowing that this would be my last first-time reading a Parker novel, I really wanted to savor it, and you know what.

That guy could really write.

Things I've Noticed: My Next few months are filling up with Non-Fiction

2011-12-01T17:09:00.000-08:00

As we move towards the end of the year I can honestly say I've had a great 11 months in genre reading and am looking foward to a little non-fiction over my Christmas holiday!

What titles will I be reading? Why I'm glad you asked.

Here are my top five non-fiction books I plan on getting around to in the next three months:

The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, by Simon Winchester

A bit of a cheat here, as I'm almost finished the book (it's for a book club), but the idea of reading the story of how the most comprehensive dictionary I've ever come across came about has a lot of appeal to me. (Side note: the most common reaction I get from people who see me reading the book? Hey Bookmonkey - you could just ask me you know! Honourable runner up: 42!)

Here comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, by Clay Shirky

This one comes as a strong recomendation from my wife, who after spending nearly a decade listening to me go on and on about communication theory and popular culture says that she has found a book right up my alley and if I don't take the time to read it after spending a whole month last year focusing on Twilight she's going to buy me a Team Edward shirt and make me wear it as the new image for this blog!

The Net Delusion: The Dark SIde of Internet Freedom, by Evgeny Morozov

A book that talks about how much damage the Internet does without focusing on Adult Content? As a blogger myself, I've got to say the title alone has me pretty interested.

The Swerve: How the World became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt

The book focuses on one of the most influential poems in history, On the Nature of Things by Lucretius and how its rediscovery helped usher in the Renaissance. As a big fan of Ancient Rome, and lately of the Showcase series The Borgias, I'm starting to get pretty interested in this period of history.

The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood, by James Gleick

The idea of a book looking at the history of Information as a concept, and how it has basically become the currency of our current era sounds pretty cool to me, so yeah, I'll definitely be checking it out!

Genre Character of the Week: The Dragon Sebeth

2011-11-30T08:57:00.000-08:00

Hi folks, just like on Monday I'll be having a shorter post today as I'm pretty heavy into school work right now (and a tiny bit of Dead Space but honestly, it's mostly a school thing!) so let's dive right into this week's character: the dragon Sebeth.

Last week I read Jo Walton's novel Tooth and Claw, which features dragons as it's main characters who are living out a drama of society, manners and the law in the style of Victorian author Anthony Trollope.

The backbone of the entire novel focuses on a lawsuit between two members of a family over the inheritance offered by a dying father at the beginning of the novel. Sebeth is the mistress of the young dragon pressing the suit against the other and unlike the rest of the characters in the book, comes across as quite mysterious, as she lives well outside the social norms of the dragons world.

The novel is a lot of fun, and after a few chapters where I was struggling to understand this strange new world, the struggles of each of the characters began to work for me and by the end of the novel I was very inversted in what would happen to all the members of the family .

Book Review: 11/22/763

2011-11-28T07:23:00.000-08:00

A quick one this week as I've had a lot of school work (all right and Dead Space work (SORRY!)) on my plate.

Stephen King's 11/22/63 is a pretty cool book - rather than his usual horror fare, this is more of a time travel fantasy story, like Richard Matheson's Somewhere in Time, or Replay by Ken Grimwood (both of which are also excellent time travel stories). In a way, it reminded me most of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander, in that the time travel aspect isn't science-driven and the story focuses more on romance and character than on concept.

The story in a nutshell, High School English teacher Jake Epping is introduced to a hole in time where he can travel to 1958, allowing him to change history. The catch, every trip resets the history changed from the previous trip, and it always begins in 1958 - so when Jake decides to save Kennedy in Dallas he has to live for five years in the late fifties and early sixties to get his shot.

The story is fun, clever and was a huge demmand on my time (well, the book and some space zombies). The book is relatively new, so it may be a while before you can get it from your libraries or in paperback, but it is a lot of fun and definitely worth the read.

Things I've noticed: How my PVR saves my time

2011-11-24T20:38:00.000-08:00

For the last few years I've had a PVR, or Personal Video Recorder, hooked up to my television - like TiVo for you folks in the States, and the thing is, for a device I purchased due to all its time saving abilities, I am sure devoting a lot of time to watchig stuff on it.

Here is what my PVR offered me when my wife and I decided to get it:

1) No more commericals (unless I wanted to watch them)

2) We could record two things at the same time, while watching a third thing (as long as it was a thing already waiting in our PVR)

3) The machine could hold hours and hours of television for us

4) We could tell the machine which shows we like, and it would tape them at whichever weird hours they aired.

A few years later and my machine is just short of 90% full for the fifth or sixth time and I'm looking at my weekend and thinking, how many of these shows can I watch before new stuff starts airing on Monday?

You know, back in the '70s, before PVRs or even VCRs, the choices for a nights entertainment were pretty simple: Was there anyting you wanted to watch airing on television? If not, go make your own fun.

Then came the '80s and the ability to both tape a show to watch whenever you liked as well as however many times you liked. In theory this meant more freedom, but suddenly people started getting a back log of tapes, which soon included movies and even television shows. DVD and Blu-Ray have given us more options, but suddently the day doesn't seem to have enough hours.

And now, as I look at the freedom offered to me by my PVR, I start to wonder, would I be better off without TV for a while?

Genre Character of the week: Isaac Clarke

2011-11-22T17:20:00.000-08:00

For the last few weeks I’ve been playing the 2008 PS3 game Dead Space. My wife got it for me as an Anniversary gift (our 14th! which means if our marriage was a kid it could apply for a Learner’s permit!) and I’ve been playing it on the weekends ever since.

The game in three simple words?

Zombies. In. Space.

Seriously, it’s like back in 2007 someone at Electronic Arts went “Hey I think we should make a videogame for that Bookmonkey guy, and I’ve got just the right idea, Zombies in Space! Who is this Bookmonkey? Well let me tell you, next year this upstart Canadian Dad is going to jump onto the blogging bandwagon and a few months after that over a dozen people will be publicly following him on blogger – seriously! Now, it’s important to remember that he won’t be getting a PS3 until late 2010, and won’t even be touching this game until after Halloween in 2011, but we might get lucky and strike a chord with some other players between now and then, who knows, maybe more than one guy likes the idea of fighting space zombies!”

Anyway, my theories of game design (delusional as they may be) aside, the game follows an engineer named Isaac Clarke, named after Science Fiction authors Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke (neither of which wrote about space zombies) who spends the entire game fixing a massive mining ship in deep space while fighting off zombies and also happens to be our genre character of the week.

Isaac doesn’t actually speak, but he is resourceful, brave and willing to fight his way through some of the nastiest zombies I’ve ever come across – seriously the game has some pretty nasty visuals, so make sure your kids are in bed before you start playing.

I guess what I like best about Isaac is the fact that he’s not a soldier, but instead a guy who goes around fixing things and making his world a better, zombie-less place.

Book Review: The Walking Dead Rise of the Governor

2011-11-20T20:36:00.000-08:00

Long time readers of my blog will be pretty familiar with this, but for those of you visiting The Wisdom of Bookmonkey for the first time, I'm a pretty big fan of zombie stories; yup, whether comedic, terrifying, or post-apocalyptic, I have always been a pretty big fan of stories involving the walking dead.

Currently The Walking Dead is both my favourite comic book series and my favourite television series, so when a novel came along focusing on one of the comic-book series biggest villains I had to take a look.

The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor, written by original series creator Robert Kirkman and Jay Bonansinga follows a small group of friends and family just after the initial zombie outbreak and shows us a much darker view of the world normally inhabited by Rick Grimes and crew. The story moved quickly, answered more than a few questions about the main character and even had a couple tie-ins for the fan of the comic book series.

The novel was a lot of fun, and I believe that even if you haven't read the original series or seen the show, it still stands quite well on its own. It was originally conceived as the first in a series of novels focusing on characters from the comics and if that is the case, I am definitely looking forward to more of these in the future.

Things I've Noticed: The More Anticipated the book, the less time to read it

2011-11-17T19:55:00.000-08:00

Over the last couple days I've been working on the novel The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor by Robert Kirkman and Jay Bonansinga. I ordered the book from my local comic book store a few months back and shifted things around so I could read it as soon as I got it added to my collection.

The thing is, it seems that the more I anticipate reading a title, the less time I actually have for reading it. Considering I read more than half a dozen books a month, it always seems that whichever book I look most forward to reading, the more busy my life tends to get.

Case in point, over the last few weeks I read the Starman Omnibus six volume collection by James Robinson (now don't get me wrong, I totally enjoyed that series and strongly recommend it here, but the books sat on my shelf for months - or in some cases years while I waited to own the entire collection), and overall things were going pretty smooth; I was on top of my assignment for my course, things were going good at both home and work and I moved through that series at a pretty good clip (roughly ninety comic issues in about five days).

Since I started this newest book, I've had a massive workload increase (both at my job and at school), people continue to walk up and chat with me every time I crack open the book (and yes, of course I stop reading to chat with people - I passed out of my moody, "Leave me alone I'm READING!!!" phase a few years back), and a pretty terrible snow storm added to a crowded bus ride home mean that I've had no time to read on my commute for the last couple days.

People often talk about a work/life balance, but for me there is a work/life/reading balance that requires extra work, and until I have that balance perfected, I will just have to resign myself to the fact that the books I'm most interested in reading will end up taking me three or four times the amount of time to read that all of my other books do.

Genre Character of the Week: Starman

2011-11-15T20:35:00.000-08:00

Often when writing these character reviews, I’ll say something like “this week’s genre character is definitely not someone I’d want to have over for dinner…” or “not someone I’d want to hang out with my kids” so I thought I would try for something different this week. This guy is actually someone I would happily have dinner with, and would be very interested in doing a used-book-store run with as well; the hero of Opal City, Starman, aka Jack Knight.

Written by James Robinson from 1994-2001, the comic series Starman follows Jack Knight, son of Ted Knight, who spent the majority of his life as protector of Opal City, Starman. The comic opens on Jack's brother David, the current Starman of Opal city, about a minute before he is (mild, 19-year-old spoiler) killed, and about a day before Jack decides to take up the name Starman for himself, for a limited time.

The series focuses on a type of superhero called a legacy hero, which is where different people over different generations act as the same hero, like the Nite Owl character in Watchmen. We see Jack, his father, others who took up the mantle and yes, even David all acting as Starman and while this is happening we see something happen in comics that I absolutely love:

Character development.

Jack starts out the series as a bit of a screw-up, having a strained relationship with his father and focused on his personal passion, collecting. Its funny, but with all the collectors who spend time reading comics, I think this is the first time I've ever come across a comic book character who is himself, a collector. Over the eighty issues of the series, Jack grows into a guy I really connected with, and honestly, a guy who sits right up at the top of my favourite comic book characters list, with Swamp Thing, Sandman, and Hellboy (my three personal favourite comic book characters).

If you've never given the series a shot, try it. I absolutely loved it.

Movie Review: Source Code

2011-11-13T20:10:00.000-08:00

Last week I finally got around to seeing the film Source Code, directed by Duncan Jones, who made one of my favourite Science Fiction films of recent years, Moon.

The premise of the film follows a man named Colter Stevens who awakens on a train without remembering how he got there and quickly discovers that everyone on the train sees him as someone else. Then eight minutes later he and everyone else on the train die in a horrible explosion.

Stevens then awakens in a chair and is told he is on a mission where he must figure out who set the bomb in a repeating eight minute chunk of time - being the last eight minutes of another mans life.

The story moves quickly and I liked the acting of all the leads, but it wasn't quite as fun a movie as Moon (which I talked about here). The movie is a lot of fun, an although I probably won't end up owning it, it is definitely worth the watch.

Things I've Noticed: My library keeps sending me batches

2011-11-10T20:51:00.000-08:00

It’s not really a complaint, per se. I mean, I enjoy getting new movies from my local library like everyone else, the problem is, I’ll put a who bunch of holds on items listed as “On Order” and although my position in the hold queue varies from #1 of 15 copies to #284 of 29 copies, everything seems to show up on the same weekend.

Last weekend I got the following films: Pom Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Rio, Unknown, Tabloid, and Source Code (which will get its own post soon).

This week I’ve got the following films: Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, The Conspirator, Limitless, and The Lincoln Lawyer.The problem is that as all of these films (excluding Dracula – a title I got recommended to me from the very enjoyable Scotch & Comics podcast) have a very small window in which I can watch them and they keep showing up in these big batches. At my local library you can only keep DVDs for a week (which is pretty standard) and you can’t renew the DVDs you have out if someone else has a hold on the title (which is also pretty standard). This tends to leave me with about a week to fit in a half dozen new release films (90 minutes to 2 hours in length) with my own television watching, family time and schoolwork.

So I guess my problem with my local library comes down to the fact that they are too efficient and have many films I am quite interested in sitting in their current collection.

Ummmm…. I guess that isn’t really a problem so much as yet another reason I like my library a lot.

Never mind.

Genre Character of the Week: Edward Mallory

2011-11-08T17:02:00.000-08:00

Ahh, Science Fiction. After a month of focusing on Horror reimaginings, taking the time to read a book focused on the “What if?” rather than the “Who goes there?” is a great treat. One of the book club selections I read this month (I’m in two) was The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. The novel is an alternate history in which Victorian England has been transformed by the creation of Charles Babbages success in ushering in an era of working mechanical computers (in real life he did create many devices, but none that could work on the scale used in the novel). Although the book has three main character, the one I’ll be examining for this week is Edward “Leviathan” Mallory.

Why I really liked Ned Mallory in five words or less:

Ned Mallory, Paleontologist of Action

The novel itself begins by following a woman named Sylvia and ends following a spy/mystic named Laurence Oliphant, each of which get about ten percent of the story to themselves (Sylvia at the beginning at Laurence at the end). The majority of the book follows the adventures of Ned Mallory through the strange mechanical-computer based world of Victorian England. If I had to describe the style of writing, I would say the story works more as a series of vignettes than it does as a single narrative.

Mallory is a straight-forward man of action, who spends the majority of the novel caught up in dealings involving the highest levels of government and a number of cloak and dagger adventures. Although not quite a Steampunk-style Sherlock Holmes, I would say he was a Steampunk-style Alan Grant (even with the dinosaurs – sort of), in that he is a man of science required to be a man of action.

The book itself had a lot of references to Victorian England that simply went over my head (I was constantly using Wikipedia to see who all the supporting characters were in our timeline) but overall was a lot of fun, and like Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula (which was definitely more my cup of tea) introduced me to an alternate version of the era in a fun and unique fashion.

Book Review: A Dark Matter

2011-11-06T20:40:00.000-08:00

The 2010 winner of the Bram Stoker Award for best novel was A Dark Matter, by Peter Straub. Having been a huge fan of the author from my first exposure to his works (The Talisman, which he co-authored with Stephen King in 1984) I can’t promise you an unbiased review, but hopefully a good one.

The book is kind of a mix of Rashamon (a Japanese film where an event was told and re-told from various points of view) and a faustian tale where someone makes a deal and ends up getting much more than they initially hoped.

The narrator is a novelist named Lee Hayward, who has been affected by an event he didn’t participate in from his childhood that involved each of his best friends (including the girl who would end up being his wife). The novel follows Lee as he attempts to put together exactly what happened on a day in 1966 when four of his friends accompanied some college kids and a sort of cult leader-type to try and perform some sort of ritual which ended up causing the death of one of the college kids and the disappearance of another.

The story works by describing the events from the point of views of each of the people involved and although they all describe the same event, there are some significantly telling differences between the versions we read. In the end the novel definitely spooked me, gave me some chills and then actually left me with a strange sense of hope. Totally worth the read.

Movie Review: Tower Heist

2011-11-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

Last month I checked out an advanced screening of Tower Heist, which opens tomorrow, and although it isn’t actually Horror or SF, there is more than a little fantasy involved in the film.

My wife described the premise as “an everyman’s Ocean’s Eleven” and honestly that may be the best description I can give. The film focuses on the staff of a fancy-shmancy apartment building in New York who find out one day that the financial genius living in the penthouse was a scam artist and has bankrupted the entire staff’s pension plan. So, lead by the building manager, four of the staff members get together to rob from the rich and give to the poor – the poor being the rest of the staff at the tower.

The film was directed by Brett Ratner, who directed the Rush Hour series with Jackie Chan and Red Dragon, a really good remake of the 1986 film Manhunter, so I figured the movie would probably be a pretty fun evening.

Honestly – the movie was great. Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy play off each other really well, and it’s nice to see Eddie moving away from the Disney films he’s been putting out for the last few years – honestly, the more foul-mouthed and less family friendly he can be, the funnier he gets.

The movie has a great sense of humour and honestly, as November and December tend to fill up with drama’s contending for the Oscar, a nice comedy would be a great palate cleanser. A really fun film.

Genre Character(s) of the week: Tucker and Dale

2011-11-01T21:09:00.000-07:00

Part of what I love about horror movies is that every year I come across a horror movie that goes far beyond what I usually expect from the genre. Three years ago it was Let the Right One In, Two years ago it was Thirst, and last year it was I Saw the Devil. On Sunday I went with my BFF Mike, my youngest daughter and one of her friends to see the film Tucker and Dale vs. Evil. The movie was incredibly fun, made locally (I’m from Alberta) and introduced me to this week’s genre characters, Tucker and Dale.

Tucker and Dale, two long-time friends, are heading off to their very own vacation home, a place where they hope to do some fishing, drinking and bonding, when they happen to drive past a group of college kids. Their first meeting does not go as well as can be expected and although they go out of their way to be friendly and even rescue one of the college kids when she falls into a lake, certain misunderstandings begin to occur.

Unfortuantely, these misunderstandings mostly mean that these two incredibly nice guys (played wonderfully by Tyler Labine and Adam Tudyk) get to watch as a group of really, really stupid college kids start killing themselves in an attempt to rescue their friend. Also, as the bodies begin piling up, it starts to look more and more like these two friends must have something to do with all these murders, after all, they are hillbillies, and these are a bunch of college kids.

The movie is great, the friendship between the two leads comes across as honest and well meaning and this may be the goriest, funniest film I’ve seen in a long time. With homages to the likes of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13^th, and even The Blair Witch Project this film seems like a perfect way to remind me what is great about horror films after spending a month in the world of reimaginings.

An original story, a lot of fun, and a definite must for both my DVD collection and my future Halloween parties, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is a great film.

Wrapping up the Reimagining

2011-10-30T17:08:00.000-07:00

So here we are, one month and ten horror reimaginings later and what have we learned? In the simplest of statements:

Most of these films are not worth your time, I watched them so you don't have to.

I guess if I had to rank then in order of watchability it would go as follows

Reimaginings that I would consider good movies

1. Dawn of the Dead (2004)

2. Fright Night (2011)

3. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Reimaginings that may appeal to horror fans

4. Halloween (2007)

5. Last House on the Left (2009)

6. The Thing (2011)

7. Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Reimaginings that are not worth your time

8. Prom Night (2008)

9. Friday the 13th (2009)

10. Halloween II (2009)

In the end, can I say watching these films was worth my time? I guess. It gave me lots to talk to all of you about, and now when I hear a thirteen-year-old explain to me how awesome that new Friday the 13th film was, I can shake my head and smile.

Happy Halloween Everyone!!!

Halloween II (2009)

2011-10-27T20:31:00.000-07:00

So we end this month returning to the series where we began, Halloween. I saw the sequel to the original Halloween on the same night, kind of a marathon and let me tell you, Halloween II (1981) was shocking, brutal, cringe-worthy and a satisfying ending to the story of Michael Myers. The story takes place in a hospital on the same evening as the original and once again Michael is after young Laurie Strode (played again by Jamie Lee Curtis) only this time most of the action takes place in a hospital, rather that in a suburban neighbourhood.

The 2009 reimagined sequel, is sort of both a sequel to a reimagining of the 1978 classic as well as a partial reimagining of the 1981 original sequel. The first twenty minutes of the film play out just like the original sequel; Laurie is taken to a hospital, Michael isn’t nearly as dead as we thought he was and some pretty horrific deaths occur (for those who don’t appreciate gross-out killings, stay with the 1978 classic, as the ’81 sequel gets pretty gruesome). Then it all turns out to be a dream sequence and we find that two years have gone by since the original film.

This is pretty much where the film starts to slide into really bad movie territory.

All right, here are the two good things about the film:

1) Brad Dourif plays Sheriff Lee Brackett in a performance that is far too good for this film – seriously, the character is a great dad in a horrible situation and the acting is some of the best I’ve seen in horror films of the last few years.

2) The strange imagery of Michael’s mother and a white horse (while terribly over-played) is pretty striking and an interesting contrast to the violence of the murder scenes.

Rather than do a list of the bad (and believe me, it would be quite a list), I’ll just try to stick with the broad strokes. First of all Laurie is pretty much entirely unsympathetic in the film – I understand that she has been through a traumatic experience but she spends the entire film being a jerk to the kind family who has taken her in and pretty whiny and annoying to everyone else. She is damaged, but honestly, if she doesn’t have anything else going for her it’s hard for the audience to invest in her emotionally. Next, we are once again following Michael about as he goes on a killing spree and we spend a lot of time hearing him grunt as he stabs people, really animalistic grunts which did a fine job of reminding me exactly how creepy the original Michael Myers was due to the fact that he didn’t make a sound. Finally Dr. Loomis (played again by Malcolm MacDowell) is entirely unsympathetic, having made a fast buck on the pain Michael’s original rampage caused by writing a true crime book about the killings and getting some fame out of the deal (he does appear on a late night show with Weird Al Yankovic, who plays himself, in one of the stranger cameos I’ve come across in horror) but basically they have taken one of the most kind-hearted characters in slasher history and made him a total jerk, and I can’t even say why, he ends up doing the same thing the original character would have, and his sub-plot involving his book seems like unnecessary padding.

This film, although not my least favourite (hello Prom Night) was definitely one of the weakest of the last month and a bit of a taint on the franchise.

The Last House on the Left (2009)

2011-10-25T18:06:00.001-07:00

Some stories are pretty classic, Romeo and Juliet for example has been re-told many times, having the original performed as stage plays, radio plays, and eventually adapted as various films and television series (some better than others), but each new adaptation brings something different to the story.

Then there are other stories which, although classic, don’t have a lot of differences in the adaptations. The Virgin Spring(1960) is based on a medieval Swedish ballad where a man’s daughters are killed and he takes his revenge on the killers. In the original ballad the killers are also the fathers children, whom he sent away at a young age. In the 1960 film, the killers are goat herders who rape and murder the daughter of a local family, who, after being discovered by the parents are in turn murdered as well. The father (powerfully played by Max von Sydow) suffers a crisis of faith over the issue and resolved to build a church with his own bare hands to make up for the crime he feels he must do for his murdered daughter.

In 1972 Wes Craven (of Nightmare of Elm Street fame), made Last House on the Left, which in my opinion is one of the most harrowing film experiences I’ve ever sat through. The film follows two girls who get mixed up with a very bad crew of people who rape and murder them both. The villains then unknowingly stay at the home of the parents where they are discovered for who they are and the parents brutally murder the killers. I probably watched this film at around the age of fourteen and although I couldn’t stop watching once I had started (the film pulls you in very quickly), It is not a film I ever need to see again.

What I did see however was the 2009 remake. In this version all of the same events happen (although the death of the daughter’s friend isn’t nearly as graphic as it was in the 1972 version – thank goodness), the villains brutalize these girls, end up staying at the parent’s home and after being discovered are brutally killed. The difference between this version and the 70’s version came down to (for me) the fact that I recognized most of the actors in the film from other movies. The acting is much better than I expect from horror films in general (especially that of the lead villain, played by Garret Dillahunt and the daughter played by Sara Paxton) and the film does a great job of setting up a foreboding atmosphere, but honestly, from the point of view of a parent, watching the girl who played the mermaid from the family film Aquamarine getting raped and nearly murdered was an awful experience. I’m not saying that actors shouldn’t expand their work into different areas, I’m just saying it was really rough.

The trick of this type of film is to show the villains doing such horrible things that when the tables are turned on them the audience will cheer for the extremely bloody deaths delivered to these killers. The film actually does a clever trick in that it lets the main villain play the role of the “Final Girl” in a limited fashion, having him come upon the bodies of his friends and being hunted down by people who wish to kill him.

The main difference in the 2009 film is to keep the daughter alive. Although raped and shot by the villains, she manages to get home and her parents do double duty, nursing her back to health while brutally murdering her would-be killers. As a thriller the film is quite good, but the graphic nature of the subject matter was definitely too much for me.

The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

2011-10-23T07:30:00.001-07:00

In media studies there is a term called Intertextuality, which basically means that other bodies of work (or indeed the personal lives) of the directors, writers, and actors in a movie or television show can have positive effects on the finished project for the viewers. Examples include having someone play strongly against type – John Wayne playing Rooster Cogburn in True Grit worked partially because the audience expected him to always play the obvious good guy in every western, whereas his character in that film was a burnt out drunk. On its own the film would have worked fine, but with Wayne’s career in westerns behind it, it made for a new look at a classic star in his genre of choice.

I bring this up because the reimagining of The Hills Have Eyes, which came out in 2006 has not one, but two examples of Intertextuality. First off, the film has two stars I’m pretty familiar with in other venues. Emilie de Ravin (famous to most as Claire from Lost) and Dan Byrd (Travis from Cougar Town) star as the two teens on the terrible road trip that leads through some pretty horrible hills. Secondly, and this one was a little trickier to spot; Doug, the husband of the teens older sister is definitely dressed and made up to look like Dustin Hoffman in Straw Dogs a 1971 thriller about a quiet man pushed too far and his violent vengeance against his wrongdoers (hmmm… I wondered as I first noticed how he was dressed – I wonder if this film will play out in a similar way?)

I probably watched the original film when I was in early junior high (grade seven or eight) and at the time, it seemed shocking and really creepy. A family on vacation get into trouble when their car is wrecked (later shown to have been done on purpose) and they are set on by a family of cannibals and thieves. At the time I found the violence shocking and the back story of the horrible family seemed pretty engrossing as well. It wasn’t necessarily what I would call a horror classic, but it was definitely worth a watch.

The remake (again sorry, I assumed it was a reimagining, but within 30 minutes of the run-time it became very obvious this was pretty much a remake) follows roughly the same story; same family, same setup, but with a few changes: 1) The cannibal family is the descendants of miners who were mutated due to atomic testing, 2) There is very little back story given other than a vague “Your government did this to us so you deserve to die, and 3) The main villain is not the patriarch (father) of the family, but instead a giant mutant son, who, although pretty scary, has no lines and therefore loses some of the menace of the original.

As far as a thriller/horror goes, however, the film was quite good. You really hope the family will escape this horrible set up and when the tables are finally turned on the mutants you are definitely cheering for their demise. I didn’t end up keeping the DVD copy I had, but it was effective and would be worth a watch as a rental.

Prom Night (2008)

2011-10-20T20:36:00.001-07:00

All right, Prom Night, the 1980 horror film starring Canadian Leslie Nielson (of Police Squad fame) and Jamie Lee Curtis (star of the original Halloween), was a pretty good B-movie. The story involved the guilt of four teens who, as pre-teens, were involved in the death of another kid (bullying mixed with negligence mixed with being stupid kids), who at their high school prom end up getting purnished... WITH MURDER!!!

The new Prom Night was, ummm… pretty much the worst 88 minutes I’ve spent this month. Honestly, I should have just slept in (I’ve been watching these movies early in the morning before the rest of my family gets up), or perhaps done some cleaning, or maybe even having finally gotten around to figuring out how to play Puerto Rico.

But for all of you, I decided to give the movie a good look.So here goes the premise – a couple years back a creepy high school teacher got obsessed with one of his female students and one night he murdered her family. Now, just as she’s getting ready for her prom night, you-know-who has escaped from the insane asylum and his heading her way. Inevitably, lots of her friends get killed.

Honestly, the closest modern horror film I’ve seen with the same premise is the 1997 film I Know What You Did Last Summer, which was actually based on a YA (Young Adult) novel of the same name.

Here were my problems with this new film:

1) The kids who spend the film dying haven’t actually done anything wrong. Usually in these types of film they use drugs, steal, are rude to adults or are busy having sex with each other. These kids are all pretty decent kids, and thus their dying seems jarring and wrong. Also there is a sub-plot involving a girl who is mean to the main character's best friend (they are both running for Prom Queen) and in the end – evil girl loses the election. That’s pretty much it, she lives while all the nice kids get killed.

2) The deaths are all PG rated stabbings – not very creative and when the bodies are found afterwards, although there is blood on their clothes there aren’t actually and tears or slices in the material, meaning that the killer must have had a magic knife.

3) The best actors in the film, who played two cops hoping to save the main character, were played by Idris Elba and James Ransone – both actors from the superb HBO series The Wire, and a constant reminder that I should get around to watching that series for a third time.

4) The back story, in which a high school teacher falls for one of his students and ends up dangerously, murderously obsessed with her, would clearly have made a better (and significantly creepier) movie than this film.

5) Finally, while watching the behind the scenes feature (and yes, I’ve watched them for all these movies. It’s all for you, my dear readers) the director expresses that the film is in fact not a reimagining, or even a remake, but instead an entirely new story which happens to share the same title.

Or in other words, a total waste of my time.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

2011-10-18T21:29:00.001-07:00

Unlike the other films I’ve been working on this month, I didn’t actually see the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) until I was about 25 years old. Basically, I had heard so many things about the film growing up that the idea of watching the actual movie scared me too much. It wasn’t until I got into the study of folklore that I decided to watch the film.

The movie itself follows the tragic tale of five kids who, after visiting the graves of the grandparents of two of the party, decide to explore the area looking for an old farmhouse that belonged to the deceased grandparents. Horrible, chainsaw involved events follow. The movie was based partly on real life serial killer Ed Gein (who was also the basis for Psycho and Silence of the Lambs), and involved a family of killer cannibals who make short work of these five kids, except for the Final Girl, Sally. Two of the clever parts of the original film are the opening narration, which gave the film a documentary feel, and the way the film plays with classic folklore and urban legends.

All right – I promise this will be my last educational segment this month, but you may need to know, so here goes:

Learning with Bookmonkey!

Lesson 2 - Urban Legends

Urban Legends are (usually) horror-based examples of modern folklore in which certain moral behaviours are described along with extreme punishments for ignoring these behaviours. Examples include people eating a Kentucky-Fried Rat when their mother has recently began a job outside of the home and no longer prepares home cooked meals, or the murder of young couples (or at least the boys) when they park their cars in out-of-the-way locations for making out. In terms of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) the crime that the protagonists commit one of the most basic crimes in classic folklore – that is they “stray off the path;” by searching an un-mapped area of Texas to look for the old home of Sally Hardesty’s grandparents, the kids involved are welcoming disaster. A more in-depth study of Urban legends can be examined in Jan Harold Brunvand’s seminal book on Urban Legends, The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings (W.W. Norton and Company, 1981)

As I only watched this film as an adult, I was able to view it a little more critically than the others, and although it didn’t have a major effect on my love of horror films, I was able to appreciate it for what it was, and view the reimagining with an eye for what might change.

The 2003 reimagining is the film responsible for the recent trend of reimagining classic horror – that is, rather than simply remaking the film, attempting to change an aspect of the basic concept, creating an entirely new story. With the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the big change is that of the killer family. The film itself takes place in the same time period (1970s), location (rural Texas), and still has the same villain (Leatherface), and even the same opening narrator. The differences included: 1) making the kids a little more guilty in the classic horror sense – the guys in the van are attempting to transport marijuana so that they can sell it in their home town, 2) the killer family is no longer cannibalistic, and in fact, mostly live ordinary lives around the town, keeping Leatherface safe as a sort kid-brother to the town. 3) there is significantly more use of a chainsaw than in the original.

Like with many of the other reimaginings, we are given more back story in which sympathies are given towards the killer, but as he’s going around killing a bunch of kids, there is only so much sympathy we can give him. The leads all do a good job of being scared victims and the film’s Final Girl, Erin (played by Jessica Biel) is actually a really good example of the classic Final Girl, being an outsider to her friends, coming across all of their bodies and eventually taking a much more active role in the death of the villain.

In the end it wasn’t a movie I would own, but it worked. I can definitely see why it would end up leading to a similar trend in horror movies over the next decade.

Fright Night (2011)

2011-10-16T20:13:00.001-07:00

Full disclosure here – I did a review of this film back when it came out in August (check it out here), but as this month I’m moving back and forth through my experiences with the originals and the reimaginings, I feel I’ve got enough to say about the title for this post.

The original Fright Night was one of those rare horror comedies I loved as a kid – they had a few laughs, some great scares and were great “gateway” films for newcomers who might not necessarily like horror. Fright Night was kind of a double treat, as it worked great for newcomers but was filled with horror movie references for the long-time fans of the genre.

The original film involved a kid named Charlie Brewster, who over the course of the movie discovers that his neighbour Jerry is a vampire. The problem? No one believes him, not his friends, family or anyone else. Eventually he goes to a late night cable TV horror host, Peter Vincent (named after Peter Cushing and Vincent Price and played amazingly by Roddy MacDowell) to help him defeat the creature before its too late. The movie mixed comedy and horror incredibly well, including one of my favourite interactions in horror movie history:

Charlie enters his living room, sees Jerry (the vampire) and is obviously startled

Charlie's Mom: Charlie, this is our next door neighbour, Jerry Dandridge

Jerry: Hello Charlie (approaches Charlie and offers his hand)

Charlie's Mom: Well Charlie, shake hands

Charlie: (Obviously shocked) What's he doing here?

Charlie's Mom: I Invited him over for a drink.

Charlie: You what!?!

Charlie's Mom: I invited him over, why?

Jerry: What's the matter Charlie? Afraid I'd never come over without being invited first?

(Jerry and Charlie's mom laugh)

Jerry: You're right, you're quite right, of course now that I've been made welcome I'll probably drop by quite a bit. In fact, any time I feel like it. (Smiling at Charlie's Mom) With your mother's kind permission, of course.

Charlie's Mom: Oh Jerry, any time.

The reimagining of the film made a few significant changes to the story: 1) The story is clearly set in a new suburban development in Las Vegas, rather than a suburb in “Anytown, USA”, 2) Jerry (the vampire) is now played by a younger actor (Colin Farrell), who plays up the dark and sexy aspect, 3) Peter Vincent is now a stage magician, rather than a late night horror host (probably because those don’t really exist anymore) and his look is largely modelled after Criss Angel, 4) The film focuses more on action and atmosphere, rather than the comedic aspects of the original.

In the end I really enjoyed the reimagining. It was a lot of fun, had a nice cameo for fans of the original and although the humour is toned down, it still functions well as a gateway film from mainstream to horror.

The Thing (2011)

2011-10-13T20:06:00.000-07:00

Alright, I'll admit it - The Thing, which I just saw an advanced screening of last night is not technically a remimagining. It is however a prequel of a remake - which I don't think has a specific classification... The only other example of this kind of film is The Scorpion King (2002) which was a prequel to the recent Mummy Films, which themselves were remakes of the 1932 Universal horror film The Mummy.

So doing my prep work to see the movie involved seeing the original 1982 John Carpenter film, and as that movie was also a remake, I also checked out The Thing from another World (1951) for good measure.

I probably saw my original (1982) The Thing when I was about 12 or 13, and it creeped me right out of my living room more than once. The remote location, the terrifying creature effects and the affective score by Ennio Morricone gave the film a really great vibe and it was one of the first John Carpenter movies I ever saw (the second was Prince of Darkness, which sits comfortably in my top five horror films of all time.)

The prequel, starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead (who I loved both here and in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) does a really great of maintaining that really creepy vibe the 1982 film set up (which to be fair borrowed a lot from the 1951 original - totally worth the watch as well), and although I had a few problems with it - they were mostly in the special effects department. The acting was good, the story (which was basically a connect-the-dots type story for anyone who saw the Carpenter film) was creepy and I especially liked how the film worked well within its constraints: having to be set in a Norwegian station, ending with a helicopter chasing a dog and showing how the base is destroyed before Kurt Russell and crew check it out in the 1982 film.

The movie had a lot of great shocks and the make-up based effects were quite good - I felt the creatures lost a little of there wow factor when the CG became too obvious, but overall a fun flick. I don't know if I would own it on DVD, but it might be fun to have a marathon with the two films some night to see if they would work in a back-to-back set up.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

2011-10-11T20:25:00.000-07:00

In my own opinion, the best of the big three slasher series I watched growing up was the Nightmare on Elm Street series. As all kids do I tried to figure out ways to avoid the horrible killers from the movies I watched. Here were a number of my solutions

Bookmonkey’s tips to avoiding the killers

1) Don’t be involved in a childhood event involving the death of a kid with a troubled sibling/parent/babysitter (Prom Night)

2) Don’t go to summer camp (Friday the 13^th)

3) Don’t babysit (Halloween)

4) Don’t be a jerk to the quiet girl in class (Carrie)

5) Don’t be suspiciously nice to the quiet girl in class (Carrie)

In the case of Freddy Krueger (the villain from the Elm Street series), your only option is as follows.

Don’t Fall Asleep.

The genius of the Elm Street movies was pretty simple – as everyone sleeps, and everyone dreams, what if the killer only existed in dreams. The films worked on both the real world level, where the kids worked desperately to stay awake and in a bizarre dream world level, where virtually nothing could save them once they were asleep. The original series has both strong and week entries (the best are parts 1 and 3 followed by Wes Craven’s New Nightmare), and definitely rank among some of my favourite scary films.

Then in 2009 I started seeing trailers for the reimagining. The movie looked sleek, and the tone reflected the creepy and frightening look of the original film. Honestly the main reason I didn’t check it out in theatres was the hiring of Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy. I was a traditionalist and considering the character requires total body makeup I wasn’t sure why they wouldn’t hire my Freddy, Robert Englund for the newest film.

But, after checking out both reimaginings of Halloween and Friday the 13^th, I decided to check out the newest version of Nightmare.

The big change in the reimagining? There is a significant question of whether or not Freddy was innocent, and therefore justified in his killings. The film shows us in dream flashbacks the mob mentality of the people who originally killed him (it is their now-teenaged children who Freddy targets) and asks the question, what if he was innocent?

Although I didn’t get the same feeling of respect for the source material that I got withHalloween, the film does look very good, the actors are well cast (and yes that includes Jackie Earle Haley – who really creeped me out), and the idea of micro-sleep, wherein the characters begin to have waking dreams as they hit massive levels of sleep deprivation, were pretty cool. My biggest problems involved the special effects, virtually everything was done with computer animation, and it simply didn’t posses the same level of reality that the stop-motion effects of the original series had.

Although I did purchase the film to check it out, I didn’t keep it, instead I traded it in for a boxed set of the first four films in the original series. Oh yeah, and I bookmarked the music video for Dokken’s Dream Warriors (hands down the coolest tune out of a horror film I’ve ever come across – sorry Cry, little Sister)

Friday the 13th (2009)

2011-10-10T04:38:00.000-07:00

Three quick things about me and the original Friday the 13^th series:

1) I definitely watched them all by the time I was thirteen (which meant parts one through eight at the time) as I watched them all as part of a Friday the 13^th Marathon I enjoyed with my childhood friends Jason and Ryan.

2) I am also very sure I did not initially watch them in order, as my earliest memories with the series involve a young Corey Feldman in part 4 (who was amazing by the way) as Tommy Jarvis who defeats Jason with some pretty amazing psychological reasoning (which is pretty impressive, considering Jason was basically a zombie).

3) The series was basically about an unstoppable killer stalking teens who hung around a haunted campground and got undressed a lot (hey! I had simple tastes as a young man).

Honestly, out of all of the horror films of my childhood, these are the weakest, and although I did spend a lot of time playing the awful 8-Bit Nintendo game, I can’t really recommend the series to anyone with any better movies to watch. As a kid they were a rite of passage, but honestly, there are better, scarier, and more thought-provoking films you could spend your time with these days.

In 2009 I saw my first trailer for the new reimagining of Friday the 13^th, and honestly, the trailer looked pretty good – not good enough to go to the theatres and see the film, but I will admit that it was this film that got me thinking about doing a close look at the phenomenon of reimagining in horror films.

So let’s get into the reimagining. The key differences? Well, there are two: First of all, unlike any of the other films I’ve looked at, this movie actually mushes the first three original films together into one film, Secondly, it attempts to show Jason (the killer) as a deranged mountain man, who has tunnels criss-crossing the old camp, which explain how he can get everywhere so quickly.The movie has the longest opening I’ve ever seen before the title card (27 minutes), and follows two stories, one about a young man (Supernatural’s Jared Padalecki) searching for his missing sister, and the other about a group of kids coming to hang out a summer cabin owned by a rich friend’s family. The rich jerk, Trent Demarco (and yes, in the strangest crossover I’ve ever come across this is supposed to be the same jerk character who menaced the lead in Transformers) brings along a bunch of friends (victims) for the fun including his girlfriend Jenna (played nicely by Danielle Panabaker) who is clearly set up as the film’s Final Girl.

Okay, although there is only a little bit, I’m going to have to get a little educational in my review of the reimaging of Friday the 13^th.

Learning with Bookmonkey!

Lesson 1 – The Final Girl

In horror films, specifically slasher films, one of the key characters is known as The Final Girl. This girl tends to be the main character, a little tomboyish (to the point of being a bit of an outcast) and usually stays away from drugs, drink and (usually) the fellows. Her job throughout the film is to notice the strange and creepy things the killer leaves behind, get chased by the killer and discover her friend's bodies in the final act, and finally grab some sort of (usually phallic) weapon and defeat the killer. Examples include Laurie Strode inHalloween, Nancy Thompson is A Nightmare on Elm Street and Sidney Prescott in Scream. The term was coined by Carol J. Clover in her wonderful book Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (Princeton University Press, 1992).

Now in any sane production of a horror film, the young man and the final girl will work together (hopefully) rescue the missing sister and escape the horrible killer after he has massacred all of the rich guys friends. This movie however, goes in a slightly different direction – yes all of the friends are killed, as is a local (which is strange as I assume the local populace only puts up with Jason as he limits his killing to outsiders), but after the young man finds his sister, the final girl is killed in an incredibly anti-climactic way.

In my own view, horror films – and especially the slasher sub-genre - have an incredibly simple structure, allowing the audience to get all of its thrills and chills, and playing by the rules. In this film, the girl clearly set up as the protagonist (she stays away from drugs, doesn’t sleep with her jerky boyfriend, and believes the young man about his missing sister when no one else will) is killed out of hand and for no good reason – just a quick shock. Sorry movie, but you have to respect the genre you exist in if you want the audience to respect you.

This movie was pretty awful – it wasn’t the worst of these reimaginings, and even though I’m not a big fan (or even a mild fan) of the source material, I do feel that the originals were really treated shabbily here. The film does stand as a good example of how not to make a slasher film though, so I guess it has some mild educational value.

Halloween (2007)

2011-10-06T16:12:00.000-07:00

The next three films we’ll be looking at, Halloween, Friday the 13^th, and Nightmare on Elm Street comprise the big three series I grew up watching as a child, and honestly, even though the quality on virtually every one of the series based on these films dropped per movie (except for the Elm Street films, which moved back and forth in terms of quality from creepy to forgettable), I still view these three original films as a major part of what got me into horror films in the first place.

Halloween (1979) is pretty much, in my opinion, one of the best horror films ever made. Until this film came out, horror was something that happened in past times, far off castles or (in the case of Night of the Living Dead) at least a remote farm house. Horror was something that happened somewhere else, but Halloween changed everything. The film takes place in Haddonfield, IL, a small suburban town that looked a heck of a lot like my hometown, and the main character Laurie was a regular looking kid. The killer appears in the background of the film at first and no one believes that anything as horrible as this man could possibly reach them in the safety of their own homes. The acting is great, the story is chilling, and honestly, for the squeamish, the violence is not that gory (that does changes in the sequel however).

Also the theme song is just about the creepiest tune I’ve ever come across.

Anyway, in 2007 it was reimagined by musician/filmmaker Rob Zombie and at the time I basically thought – why on earth would you ruin such a great film with an MTV-style treatment. The original is great, just leave it alone.

But for you, my dear readers, I decided to check out these recent reimaginings earlier this year and here is how the film stacks up.

The key to the reimagining of Halloween is that the film focuses on the killer (Michael) rather than the victim (Laurie). We are given an extremely detailed back story for our killer, including his time in an insane asylum, and the film is almost halfway over before we even meet our leading lady. Although it is an interesting way to focus the story, by making Michael more sympathetic and barely developing the characters of Laurie and her friends, the killings seem less about the terror the kids feel and more about the killer himself.

I will say, however, that I quite liked the acting on the part of Scout Taylor-Compton (Lauire), and Malcolm McDowell (Dr. Loomis), although the filmmaker made a bizarre choice by removing Dr. Loomis as a sympathetic character an making him more focused on what fame Michael can bring him.

Also, and hopefully this will carry through to the sequel (I’m waiting to watch it later this week), the film very clearly shows the affection that Rob Zombie has for the source material. Even though some of the choices he made in the film were strange to me, there is no question throughout the film that he really loved the original and did his best to do it justice.

Although I didn’t like it as much as I did the Dawn of the Dead remake, it was worth the watch (for fans of the original), and creates a consistently creepy feel throughout the entire film.

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

2011-10-04T17:52:00.000-07:00

A Quick note: I’ll be writing these reviews in the order I originally saw the remakes.

My love affair with zombie movies goes back to the nightmares I got from watching Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Released in December of 1983, I would have first seen this video on the Canadian music video show, Video Hits at about the age of seven. The story within a story concept for the video got me pretty deeply invested with our main character (who is never named), so when suddenly Michael turns into a zombie and dances/attacks her it freaked me out.

The original Night of the Living Dead probably came into my young life around the age of ten or eleven (the end of Elementary School came at about the same time as our first VCR, so suddenly I had access to local video stores and therefore scary films). Night of the Living Dead blew me away the first time I saw it – playing with all the rules I thought horror films had to follow and leading to a young interest in monster films and stories overall.

I would have seen Dawn of the Dead in Junior High school (probably grade seven), and the idea of escaping from zombies by hiding in a mall seemed incredibly smart to me, even though it doesn’t work out that well for most of the people in the film.

Fast forward to 2004, I’m 28 years old, a parent of two and suddenly I am faced with a strange question… Should I bother going to see a remake of a film I saw almost half my lifetime ago? I mean, what possible differences could there be? In the end I saw it as a matinee on a Saturday or Sunday, due to either a lack of options or an interest in seeing how the source material would be adapted.

The biggest difference in this reimagining of the classic, the zombies no longer walk, they run.

At the time, this seemed like such a strange thing for them to do, as I was always most scared of the slow-moving, but ultimately unstoppable zombies from my childhood films. The movie looks pretty slick, has a great cast (stand outs for me include Sarah Polley (of Splice), Mekhi Phifer (of er and Torchwood: Miracle Day), and Ty Burrell (of Modern Family) and the effects (both special and dramatic) are pretty darn effective. Although running zombies are not really my thing, they are pretty freaky antagonists in this film.

Does the movie actually do better than the original? No, the original set the standard for zombie siege films and was making social commentary as well. As far as a first film to be looking at for this month however? It’s a pretty decent horror film with lots of thrills and chills.

The Reimagining of Bookmonkey

2011-10-02T10:20:00.000-07:00

Day One: Remakes versus Reimaginings.

This month at the Wisdom of Bookmonkey we are going to be looking at a recent phenomena of popular genre films, the remimagining. Before I begin reviewing the various films however, it is important to separate what I'm talking about when I say remimagining.

For ages, horror has been a genre of remakes; as both a character and a story, Dracula has been remade so many times that it is virtually impossible to simply say your favourite film is Dracula. Do you mean the Bela Lugosi one? How about Christopher Lee?

Personally, I don't mind remakes - the genre has had remakes since the beginning and it is interesting to see a new productions take on a classic tale.

For me the trouble comes with a recent trend in horror of remaking all the ones I grew up with as a child. I'm okay with films from the '40s, '50s, and '60s being remade, but as soon as you start looking at films that came out in the '70s you start hitting the films of my childhood. (all right to be fair I was born in '76 but as I grew up watching horror films from my local video store in the early '80s, so I grew up watching them late at night at home on video).

In 2003 a remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was released to less than stellar reviews but had a lot of folks checking it out in theatres and so the trend was born - the b-grade horror films of my youth have become grist for the mill and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.

The thing about these newer films however, is that they are being billed as reimaginings, stories that take aspects of the original films but then try to tell stories of their own. Sometimes this works (not nearly as often as I would like) and sometimes it crashes into a waste of 90 minutes of my life, but for the next month we are going to visit almost a dozen of these films, and see how they stand up to the classics.

Welcome to...

The Reimagining of Bookmonkey.

From the Desk of Bookmonkey

2011-09-30T05:16:00.000-07:00

As my next month of posting will be focusing on recent re-imaginings of the horror films I grew up with, I thought I would take my last post to fill you in on my what to expect when things return to normal in November:

1) I should have a whole new bunch of books to review – the one I’m most excited about? Shock Value: How a few eccentric outsiders gave us nightmares, conquered Hollywood, and invented modern horror, by Jason Zinoman. The book focuses on the horror genre in film throughout the ‘70s, and as any number of my favourite horror films were made in that decade it has me pretty excited!

2) Although I won’t have many “First Impressions” posts regarding the new genre television shows (Terra Nova is actually the only one that comes to mind right now, and I’m not hearing a lot of great stuff about it), I will be taking a look at a number of my favourite genre shows growing up.

Hope you have a great weekend, and be sure to check back all next month as I review the recent reimagining of horror.

Bookmonkey

Genre Character of the Week: Morgaine

2011-09-27T17:43:00.001-07:00

As I mentioned last Friday, I’m currently reading the 1983 fantasy novel, The Mists of Avalon, and as I’m nearing the end of that story, I’m happy to say I’ve found this week’s genre character, Morgaine.

The premise of the book is pretty simple – tell the story of King Arthur from the point of view of the women in the legend; His Mother Igraine, Half-Sister Morgaine, and his Wife, Gwenhwyfar. The interesting thing about the book is the many levels it works on; showing a human side to an epic legend, showing the opposing world views of paganism and Christianity, and looking at the legend while specifically keeping in mind the rules and responsabilities that women held at the time.

The majority of the story comes from Morgaine’s point of view, and she is portrayed as a tragic character; starting as a young woman abandoned by her parents and feeling as if the world is using her poorly throughout. The appeal for me is how complex the character is shown as well as having a really interesting character arc.

The story does hit all the major beats of the legend (Arthur, Merlin, Round Table, Camelot, Lancelot, Mordred, The Quest for the Grail and others), but shown from Morgaine’s point of view, the events take a new light and show a world order being overwhelmed by something new.

The book is really big (my copy runs at 876 pages) and I’ve been reading it for over a week now, but in the end it is definitely worth checking out.

Top Five Comics I'm still getting around to reading

2011-09-25T20:15:00.000-07:00

As I'm sitting here typing away in my study, I'm faced directly by my bookshelf of books to be read and I'm realizing that my comic book and graphic novel collection is starting to pile up. I've been pretty focused on novels and school work for the last year and therefore the important business of comic book reading has fallen to the wayside a little (Interestingly I've read a number of books about comics this year, but that's not quite the same thing).

So here we go - Bookmonkey's top five list of comics I own but still haven't gotten around to reading yet:

5. Tiny Titans - this kid-aimed comic actually belongs to my youngest daughter, but those teeny tiny little versions of the Teen Titans are consistently awesome - I'm about 10 issues behind.

4. Jack of Fables - I got up to volume 5 (I think), to just about where the Great Fables Crossover occurs and haven't gotten back to the series since - I own them, I just haven't read them yet - I'm about 4 trade paperback collections behind.

3. Fables - Same story as above, only I'm about 5 trade paperback collections behind ( I did read Peter & Max, however, and it was awesome).

2. Hellboy - This one is a little embarrassing, although I'm only one trade paperback collection behind (and it only came out about a week ago), I'm usually so good about reading this title that a new collection doesn't spend a night in my house without me checking it out.

1. Starman - This one is actually the worst (not the series, I haven't read it yet), I mean this is my worst offender, as I own all six Starman Omnibus collections in hardcover, have heard nothing but praise from my friends who have read it, and it has a Hellboy crossover and I still haven't gotten past issue one! The series looks so good, but I just haven't had the time to begin!

So there you go - the comics I own that I still need to get around to reading. I've just got a few more books to read this month and then I'm totally going to start (only next month is happening in just over a week and then I have seven more books to read...

Things I've Noticed: The Ladies love The Mists of Avalon

2011-09-22T16:34:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite parts of commuting to work is that I get some extra time for reading; both on the buses and trains I take as well as at the bus stops while I’m waiting (my commute is both strange and interesting), and I love when people approach me to talk about whatever it is I’m currently reading.

Last year while I read the Twilight series for my October posts, there were a lot of comments, but most of them went along the lines of,

“Hey, check that guy out – he’s reading Twilight!”

“Doesn’t that guy realize that only little girls read Twilight?” (The Team Edward backpack my BFF Mike leant me probably didn’t help).

Currently I’m reading The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley (a 1983 novel which tells Arthurian legend from the point of view of the women in the story) and I can honestly say I haven’t had this positive response to whatever I’m reading for quite a while.

With the exception of one ride, I have been approached by at least one woman per bus trip I’ve taken to work or school (eight trips so far this week), who will ask me how I’m liking the book so far, if I’m aware of the many prequels and sequels and whether I have seen the 2001 TV mini-series adaptation.

I’m not complaining about the attention (and yes, my lovely wife, I make sure to mention you in my first reply, for example, “Yes, I am enjoying the book; my wife, the apple of my eye, my one and only, and the mother of my children, has been telling me to read this story for years!), but it is pretty impressive to me that a book that is currently creeping up on thirty years since it was published still gets this level of attention.

Genre Character of the Week: Mark

2011-09-20T15:51:00.001-07:00

Last month I turned 35, and as was demanded in some local by-law (I’m pretty sure), it required me to take a good look at my own mortality. Here’s the thing, at 35 I’m somewhere between a third and halfway through my expected life span (The guys in my family tend to die of natural causes somewhere between age 56 to their late 70s), and even considering the fact that I don’t drink or smoke, It is pretty safe to state that I’m either nearing the top of the roller coaster or beginning to head down the other side (which is, after all the really fun part).

Last weekend I finished reading the 1977 novel Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm, and I’ve got to say the book is pretty cool. The premise is pretty simple – as the end of the world begins to become apparent to a well situated family, they decide the way to ride out the coming storm is through cloning. The novel follows (mild spoilers) the human creators, their first batch of clones, a later batch of clones and eventually, this week’s genre character, Mark.

Yesterday I spend some time thinking over how best to describe what appealed about the character – he comes generations after the first protagonist has died, and in his own way, may be the savior of a future human race. He is an outcast in a society of clones (his parents created him the old fashioned way), and although he has a lot of loneliness and anger to deal with, he really loves the people who he shares his world with.

I know that in the long view, I have put my faith in my kids to live a good life, hopefully telling their kids and grandkids a little about old Great-Grandpa Bookmonkey, and maybe, just maybe, leave their world a little better than it will be when they first show up.

In the end, that's all I'm hoping for myself.

Movie Review: Danger Diabolik

2011-09-18T18:06:00.001-07:00

I love how sometimes things just line up to bring awesomeness directly into my life. Case in point; a few weeks back I was reading Supergods by Grant Morrison (a really great book about the history of super-hero comic books and their effect on the culture) when I came across a reference to a comic book movie I had never heard of called Danger Diabolik.

The reference in the book named the director as Mario Bava, who had directed a 1961 horror film I really enjoyed called Back Sunday which mixed some really disturbing imagery with a pretty creepy concept and reminded me that I should really be looking at Italian Horror someday soon.

Anyway, as I had heard of the director and now the film, it was time to research whether or not I could get my hands on the movie when my good friend Ron mentioned he owned the movie on DVD and would be happy to bring it over.

Having just seen the movie a couple days ago here is my unbiased and critical opinion...

Danger Diabolik is awesome.

Yup, that's what all my research into spy films, comic book films and Italian films has got me - the movie is incredibly cheesy - I mean, honestly I can't even begin to describe how utterly ridiculous and at the same time totally awesome this movie is to me.

The main character, Diabolik is a criminal, stealing unbelievable amounts of money and specializing in the ridiculous. The film is filled with action sequences, explosions and some of the most incredible I-can't-believe-I-just-saw-that moments I've come across in a long time.

If you can get a hold of this movie, see it. If not, I'm sorry.

Thanks Ron!

Things I've Noticed: FREEDOM!

2011-09-15T16:04:00.000-07:00

Finally! After weeks and weeks of confinment in my fibreglass prison I am free to wreck my vengeance upon humanity! Lock me away will you? Now nothing can come between me and my plans for... ummm... I dunno...

(Sound of embarrased Bookmonkey attempting to think of a quick plan)

All right, honestly my biggest plans right now involved taking a shower without wrapping my arm in a towel and stuffing it in a garbage bag for good measure, and also work, and blogging, and sleeping without accidently wacking my wife with my cast in my sleep.

A quick thanks to my BFF Mike for handling my anniversary post as I was in no position to write it myself.

Right now I'm feeling pretty great - looking forward to exercising and doing all the things I was unable to do while I was incapacitated, also looking forward to my family no longer bothering me about how much I complained about my enforced imprisonment.

I'm FREE!!!

Genre Character of the Week: Gwen Cooper

2011-09-13T18:08:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I started watching Torchwood: Miracle Day with my youngest daughter and about halfway through I realized that I had never done a Genre character of the week for anyone from the series as of yet, so this week lets focus on my favourite character, Gwen Cooper.

As soon as I typed in her name I hit a pretty tricky dilemma; Torchwood is filled with plot-twisting goodness and just finished it's fourth season, and if you haven't ever seen the series before, I don't want to wreck anything for you (honestly, if you've never seen the series before, go on and check it out - it is significantly darker than its parent series, Doctor Who, but at the same time, rides the really hard to find line between Horror and Science Fiction with some of the most wondrous and creepy stories I've ever come across in television).

So, what to say about my favourite character from the show without giving away any spoilers, okay, here goes.

1) In 2006 Gwen entered the series as a police officer in the city of Cardiff

2) She is portrayed amazingly by actress Eve Myles

3) She ends up tied as (mild spoiler) my favourite character of the Doctor-Who-niverse (is that a real word?)

For those of you in the mood for a darker series, Torchwood is a great place to start, and after you check it out, I can tell you all why I like the character so much.

RIP Cliff Robertson

2011-09-12T04:52:00.000-07:00

Here's the thing about Cliff Robertson, for me, even though I saw him most recently in the Spider-Man movies (in which he played Peter's Uncle Ben), he will always be best remembered as Charly Gordon in the film Charly (based on the story Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes).

For me, Charly was the first example of a science fiction film that didn't rely on action (laser guns, space ships, etc.), but instead on character to get its point across. The film (and if you haven't seeen it, stop reading and go request it from your local library now) sits as one of my favourite SF movies overall, and the biggest reason for that is the main character, as portrayed by Cliff Robertson.

Honestly, the guy helped lead me towards the more cerebral SF (and stories overall) I enjoy as an adult.

We'll miss you.

Things I've Noticed: Life with a short arm cast can be interesting

2011-09-08T21:26:00.000-07:00

I've got a week left with my cast on - next Thursday they'll be taking it off and hopefully the x-rays they take will allow them to leave it off.

Having spent the last three weeks wearing a cast here is what I've learned:

1) No matter how cool you think casts are, they are not worth breaking a bone over.

2) As I broke a bone in the wrist of my dominant hand, my handwriting has suffered significantly

3) I can type, but I need to take my time and a number of breaks

4) I miss just being able to go for a walk without carrying an emergency garbage bag and elastic band in case of rain.

5) People are actually quite interested in casts, and will go out of their way to come and talk to you about it.

In the end, I'm really REALLY looking forward to being finished with my arm cast, but it hasn't been all bad - also getting people to sign my cast has been a real hoot.

Genre Character of the Week: Songbird

2011-09-06T16:42:00.001-07:00

Have you ever felt like you were the sole voice of reason in a roomful of crazies? How about if those crazies were all super-powered? A couple weeks back I was loaned a copy of Warren Ellis' Thunderbolts: Faith in Monsters, which follows a team of super-powered folks in the post-Civil War Marvel Universe who spend their time tracking down unregistered heroes. The character that caught my attention the most, Melissa Joan Gold, aka Songbird.

All right, let me back up, Civil War (which I never read) was a massive Marvel comic crossover event back in 2006 which ruined not one, but two comics I was currently reading (Fantastic Four and Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man), and basically ended up with all the heroes in the Marvel Universe (Iron Man, Captain America, The X-Men, Spider-Man, etc.), taking sides on whether or not the government should be involved in their business.

In the end the decision was yes, and somehow a team of super-villains were put together to hunt down heroes who refused to register. The team included Spider-Man villain Venom, Daredevil villain Bullseye and as a boss they had Norman (The Green Goblin) Osborn. As the team existed before Osborn's reign, there were a couple holdovers, including the once-villain-now-conflicted-hero Songbird.

Songbird spends much of the story arc attempting to bring the extreme level of violence her new team-mates like to use down to merely terrible levels. Honestly, this series really looks at the idea of making the best of a terrible situation and takes it to superhuman levels. As a story it was very violent (I wouldn't let my 14-year-old read it), but as with all of Ellis' writing, it was very, very good.

Series Review: Falling Skies

2011-09-05T04:41:00.000-07:00

Over the last week I’ve watched the 2011 SF series Falling Skies with my wife and youngest daughter. Two months ago I posted my impressions of the first couple episodes and now that we’ve finished the first season here’s what I’ve learned.

1) My youngest daughter likes bad boys (this does not bode well for her dating years)

2) The series is a pretty decent post-apocalyptic drama, which I’d rank slightly above Jericho (Aliens trump bombs), but slightly below Jeremiah, Survivors (2011) and my currently tied favourites The Walking Dead and the Battlestar Galactica reboot.

Throughout the ten episodes which made up the first season, the stories focused on the importance of sacrifice, family, teamwork and good communication. Also I really enjoyed the references to military history in terms of fighting an alien menace. The acting was strong, the story was engrossing, and although I wouldn’t have made all the same choices these survivors did, the fact that they focused on some pretty tough ones made for good drama.

As the series was renewed for a second ten-episode season to air next summer, I definitely look forward to it.

Things I've Noticed: Historical Fiction is pretty amazing

2011-09-01T19:46:00.000-07:00

A few months back I did a “Genre Character of the Week” featuring Matthew Corbett, the protagonist of the Robert R. McCammon novel, Speaks the Nightbird. The story in question followed a magistrate’s clerk in 1699 America and his involvement with a witch trial. Earlier today I finished the third novel in the series, Mr. Slaughter.

These three novels (The second is titled The Queen of Bedlam) give a really interesting look at colonial life in the context of a mystery novel. Once a historical novel becomes a series the opportunity to world build starts showing up and these books definitely do not disappoint. Starting in the Carolina colonies and moving to New York well before it became NYC, the stories, which I would describe as a mix of action, mystery and horror, show a world I wasn’t terribly familiar with before. The closest example I can give of how much I like this series is to compare it to my two other favourite Historical Fiction mystery series, The Cadfael books by Ellis Peters and the Novels of Ancient Rome mysteries by Steven Saylor.

Although I’m mostly a Fantasy/Horror/SF guy myself, I have to say that the more I read of historical fiction, the more I’m digging it.

Genre Character of the Week: Peter Watson

2011-08-30T20:58:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite parts of being in two separate book clubs is the great stories I get recommended to me by my friends that I may not have heard of otherwise.

So there we were, sitting at our local Denny’s, enjoying coffee and 2000 calorie lunches (I lie, mine was probably 2500 calories – and I had desert… and a milkshake!) when the topic came up of our earliest memories of horror stories. For me it was Roald Dahl’s The Witches, a story involving a young boy, his grandmother, and some of the most evil characters I’ve ever come across in fiction. For my friend Dr. Teeth, it was another short story of Dahl’s, The Swan, from his fiction collection The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More.

Having never even heard of the title, I requested it from my local library and finished the book yesterday. I am happy to add the hero of The Swan, Peter Watson to my genre characters of the week.

Seen through the eyes of the stories bullies/protagonists, Peter is described as:

“…the enemy. Ernie and Raymond detested him because he was nearly everything that they were not. He had a small, frail body. His face was freckled, and he wore spectacles with thick lenses. He was a brilliant pupil, already in the senior class at school although he was only thirteen. He loved music and played the piano well. He was no good at games. He was quiet and polite. His clothes, although patched and darned, were always clean. And his father did not drive a truck or work in a factory. He worked in the bank.”

The story follows these two sadistic bullies as they torment and nearly kill Peter. Peter himself comes across as both terrified and having one of those strong young minds I love coming across in YA fiction.

The story is great – chilling and terrifying and with well drawn characters – definitely worth checking out.

Movie Review: Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown

2011-08-28T13:59:00.000-07:00

For the last few months I've had my eye on a documentary about the life of H.P. Lovecraft called Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown which came out in 2008. While checking out IMDb this morning, I found the film was available online here.

The movie is an overview of the life of the author as well as a look at his influence on modern genre fiction and film. Folks like Neil Gaiman, Ramsay Campbell, John Carptener and Guillermo Del Toro all talk about the author, favourite stories and his influence over all.

Although I don't think the film would be of much interest to people not at least vaguely familiar with the author, for anyone who has read any of his short stories, it was a pretty comprehensive view of the mans life.

Totally worth checking out.

Things I've noticed: I'm not too cool for school

2011-08-26T11:06:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I got in a pretty nasty bicycle accident on my way home from work, putting me out of commission for a couple weeks and leaving me in a cast until halfway through September.

On the positive side however, I just found out that I got into Grad School, so as of next month I will be working towards getting my Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) degree.

This means (hopefully) that by the end of 2016 (as I'm working part-time) that I will be a librarian working in a future library (like the one based above - although hopefully not that one as it has no comfortable seating, obvious possibilities for suicidal patrons and nowhere for the staff to go).

Genre Characters of the Week: Ratchet and Clank

2011-08-23T04:42:00.001-07:00

Have I ever mentioned how much I love my local library? As I'm working my way through classic PS3 games, usually through purchases at EB Games, there are a number of titles that are still currently too far above my price point to purchase - Red Dead Redemption, L.A.. Noire, etc.) so once I found out that my local library has video games, some of those pricier titles are now available to me. Case in point, the first title featuring this weeks genre characters: Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction.

Ratchet (pictured left) is an alien creature known as a lombax who, along with his servant/backpack/friend/robot Clank save the universe on a pretty regular basis. What I really enjoy about both characters is that they are pretty genuinely funny (humour and SF are always good friends of mine), and that by playing the game I'm seeing lots of neat settings, amazing and varied weapons and I can also play the game whether my kids are watching or not (there are a lot of horror-themed games where I have to play the game early in the morning with the sound off, and hiding under a blanket).

In the end, these guys are funny, effective and have a lot of heart. A solid game.

Movie Review: Fright Night (2011)

2011-08-22T07:57:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone, I'm back!

Right now I've got a cast on my right arm but my fingers are free so I can type, slowly and with a lot of breaks, but I can do it!

On Saturday I went out with my youngest daughter and her friend to see the recent remake of the 1985 horror comedy film Fright Night.

Although I didn't see the original in theatres (I was nine-years-old at the time, so I had to wait to rent it), I definitely saw the film before finishing Elementary school and really liked it at the time. I guess the idea of a kid seeing monsters and having no adults believe him so he has to face the creature alone appealed to me.

Anyway, fast forward 27 years and I'm taking my 14-year-old daughter to see the new version. She had already seen the original, so we both knew what to expect overall.

Honestly - I found it to be a pretty entertaining film. Although it wasn't as graphic as the original, I liked the direction they took the film, Colin Farrell was great as the vampire and David Tennant stole the show as Peter Vincent.

I think the movie is a great gateway film to the horror genre, as it was scary, but more roller coaster-scary than get-under-your-skin-scary. It was a lot of fun and I'll definitely be adding it to my DVD collection in a few months.

My only advice? See it in 2D if you can as much of the film is set at night and the 3D glasses make the film difficult to see sometimes.

Two Year Anniversary Guest Post!

2011-08-18T16:43:00.000-07:00

Hi, I'm Mike The Bold (File Photo Attached). You may remember me from such blogs as 'Mike's Best Blog Ever' & the forthcoming extended paean to Star Trek- 'Beyond The Farthest Blog'. Although, if you remember something from the future, that's precognition, Kyle!

Recently incapacitated while bravely battling the forces of the occult, Bookmonkey asked me to say a few words about his two years on the job.

So, here goes:

KLAATU! BARADA! NIKTO!

Aaaaand now a few more. What a magnificent blog it's been so far! I'm well aware of the demands on his time as father, provider, and ghostbuster (I assume) and yet Bookmonkey puts these out like clockwork, only more reliably and consistently. And I'm not just saying that because the man has excellent taste in BFFs.

Check out topics as diverse as diversity allows, with particular attention to the spooky and the infinite realms of the fantastic. Shove over, Roger Ebert, Bookmonkey knows how to provide truly USEFUL reviews for the geek on the go.

Delve into Genre Characters of the Week every Wednesday! Chilling creatures, mighty heroes, mice and much more. I liked the idea so much, I STOLE it and I only paid him chump change!

Finish out your workweek with Things He's Noticed. Not for nothing is this called 'Wisdom of Bookmonkey'. He's no slouch in the smarts department.

Thank you, blogspot, for hosting this guy. Thank you, dear followers, readers, and lurkers, for doing what you do. And thank you, Bookmonkey, for clever, insightful, and entertaining posts.

Bookmonkey may not spend as much time on TV cartoon fare for the under seven set (my mental peeps!) but you'll be amazed what you can get out of his Paper DVDs once in a while. Here's to the next two years!

Bookmonkey Update: OUCH!

2011-08-16T08:48:00.001-07:00

Hello All,

I just thought I'd put a quick note here that I had a bicycle accident last Friday and having possibly fractured a bone in my wrist and definitely covered much of myself with bone bruises and road rash, I'm having a bit of trouble working on creating new posts right now.

Also the Tylenol 3 with codeine I'm taking is slowing me down pretty much completely.

Hopefully I'll be back to regular posting as of Friday.

Until them... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Movie Review: TiMER

2011-08-14T13:18:00.000-07:00

I think one of my favourite things about genre fiction is how it can surprise you. How it can exceed your expectations in a way that a lot of other fiction can’t. Basically you sit down to read, play, or watch something involving a robot, a unicorn or a monster and find yourself getting what you wanted and then suddenly realizing that the story gave you a lot more.

Case in point: The 2009 film TiMER.

The premise of this Science Fiction film is pretty simple. What if there were a device you could have attached to your wrist at a mall that told you, with complete assurance exactly when you would meet your soul mate? The machine only works with people who are actively in the program, so it is possible, like the main character, to have a wrist band displaying flashing dashes rather than a specific number of days, hours, and minutes until your soul mate pays the $79.99 fee to receive their own TiMER device.

Here’s what I liked about the movie – first of all, the lead actress Emma Caulfield was really really good – having only seen her in the tooth-fairy themed horror film Darkness Falls before this, I was pleasantly surprised by her comedic acting chops. Secondly, like all of my favourite fiction, the story was very character driven, leading the audience to care about (or at least understand) all of its characters. Finally the score was a lot of fun.

The movie moved deftly between romance and drama, and although it was a quieter film (some will find it slow), I really enjoyed how well the film handled its subject matter.

This movie was one of the nicest surprises I’ve had in Science Fiction films all year.