Series Review: Carnivale

Last week my wife and I finished watching the HBO series Carnivale, a dark fantasy series set in the midst of the Great Depression. We had seen season one a few years back, but even though we have owned the second season for two years, it was only during the last couple months that we've have had time to watch the second season.

I'm going to go fairly light on spoilers and simply explain what I felt about the series. For starters, yes - I really enjoyed the show, and I think that if you enjoy the fantasy genre, this show is definitely worth a look.

Set during one of the least magical times in history, the show follows two parallel story lines: a priest as he begins to build a ministry and a young man who joins a travelling carnival. Both men begin having strange dreams in the pilot that involve each other, as well as visions of the past and the future. Both men also develop certain abilities, the priest can see into the minds of others and the young man can heal people.

For me, the strength of the show lies in its strong story arcs, as well as the great acting of the entire cast. At first, both the carnival story line and the church story line seem to have too many characters and it's difficult to keep track, but as you work your way through the first season, it becomes simpler to understand what is happening, and you get to really see these characters develop.

The only bad part of the show for me is that it ends on a cliffhanger, as the original intent was to have a story that developed over six seasons and it ended after the second one, there are a lot of unanswered questions. Knowing about the cliffhanger going in, however, I was able to enjoy the show for what it was, an intriguing look at magic in a terrible time, with a focus on free will versus predestination.

Why I Love Horror: The Video Station Years

I’ve been working at a new office for the last couple of weeks, and today when the cleaning guy came in and did the floors in our file room I was suddenly transported to my first real job – swing shift at my local video store (although I didn't work at the one pictured above - it was pretty similar).

I had had plenty of jobs before, but the Video Station was my first job as a husband and a father. I started by working the swing shift, which is to say Midnight to 8:00am on Tuesdays and Wednesdays followed by an 8:00am to 4:00pm shift on Thursdays and Fridays. The hours were terrible but the pay wasn't bad.

My evening shifts included cleaning the entire store (hence my smell-induced memory this morning) and the luxury of watching whatever kind of movie I liked after midnight (not including the backroom stuff obviously).

This meant once my cleaning was done (about an hour of work), I had six hours a night, twice a week, to watch all the movies I wanted (the last hour was spent doing prep work for the day shift), and believe me, with two young kids in the house, I checked out an awful lot of horror.

Like I mentioned in my first post about my love of horror, I watched a lot of slasher flicks as a young kid (for anyone else who did, I strongly recommend the documentary Going to Pieces, as it looks at the subgenre and puts the films into a context – which I love), but it was in my twenties working as a video store employee that I began to work my way through the genre, alphabetically, based on the movies that weren’t rented out that night.

Long story short – I saw a lot of crap. But for every ten or eleven films that had only a few minutes of cleverness in them, I saw some amazing films, films that showed me exactly how well any genre can work if everyone is doing their job correctly.

Case in point – The Exorcist (pictured right). I saw this film the first time when I was still in Elementary, and you know what? It was pretty boring, the shocks were too far apart for my taste, and I didn’t get a lot of it. I next saw it around the age of seventeen, the demonic aspect of the film hit me a lot closer to home, and I could appreciate the technical work that went into the film. As a young father at the Video Station however, the film terrified me, I literally could not get the creep factor of this film out of my head for months. Not the demonic stuff, not the pea soup, but specifically the idea that something is wrong with your kid and no one can help, something so bad that eventually you give up on the doctors and head to a priest. That was some scary stuff indeed.

I worked at the Video Station for a few years, and by the time I was done I had seen a lot of older movies (they didn’t get rented as often), had developed a love of western novels (which I posted about here) and could honestly say I was definitely no longer just a guy who liked horror movies, but had become an enthusiast of the genre.

Genre Character of the Week: Dr. Simon Tam

As I’m currently going through my old Firefly DVDs with my youngest daughter, I thought I would focus this week’s character on one of my favourite characters of the series, Dr. Simon Tam.

Here’s the thing about Simon, this guy is exactly the big brother everyone wishes they could have; the lengths he goes to in protecting his sister are pretty incredible – he throws away his career, becomes a fugitive, and effectively leaves everything he has ever known and removes any chance for a return all to do his duty and try and help out his little sister River.

I'm not at all saying that Simon has no flaws, the guy seems to have a talent for putting his foot in his mouth and even when he's trying to act like a gentleman he tends to come across as a bit of a prissy princess. I think it was this balance between being genuinely heroic and a bit of a jerk that really impressed me with the actor who played Simon (Sean Maher), who I thought was great throughout the series.

A few episodes into the series I asked my daughter about who she liked best; Dr. Tam definitely came out on top - and as we're from the same hometown as Nathan Fillion, I thought he would be a shoe in (She loved him as Captain Hammer and we watch Castle with her every week); I guess it just goes to show that if you are going to be portrayed in a flashback episode as a little kid, you should have that kid played by Zach Efron.

Movie Review: Four From Hammer Horror

Back in June I posted about my explorations of the films from Hammer Horror with a review of Horror of Dracula. Over the last week my online rental service sent me four more Hammer Horror films, so here is a quick impression of the films I saw.

The Mummy (1959)

This film is actually a lot closer to the recent remakes than the original Universal film - you've got the Mummy himself, looking like the classic bandaged creature rather than the completely human looking Boris Karloff and even better Peter Cushing as a young, driven, and basically a nice guy (very different than his Baron Frankenstein).

The Brides of Dracula (1960)

Far and away my favourite of the lot, this film had everything I love in vampire movies - great atmosphere, an effective score, a sense of dread, and even though it had a ridiculously fake vampire bat - I have to say it tops the list for coolest vampire kill I've ever seen in a motion picture. I will definitely be purchasing this movie.

The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)

This one was actually pretty cool as it was adapted from the novel The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore, which I read last year, and kept remarkably true to the original story (except it was set in Spain rather than Paris), a lot of fun, and you get to see a very young Oliver Reed.

The Phantom of the Opera (1962)

Although considered a bomb when the film was originally released, I was impressed with the fact that the studio did actually ensure that a film taking place in an opera house had an actual opera being performed in the film. The creature effects were cool and I loved Michael Gough as a villain (although to me he'll always be Alfred Pennyworth).

By the way, after my last post I got a comment from the folks over at the Watching Hammer blog and after checking it out, I've got to say that I can't think of a better place to start if you are looking to explore the many films from the folks at Hammer.

Things I've Noticed: Cheesy horror is some of my favourite horror

For the last few months I've been revisiting old horror movies with my youngest daughter, a couple years ago we watched all the old Universal Horror movies from the 30s and 40s in preparation for Van Helsing, and then she decided to check out a newer horror film.

Against my wife's common sense, I picked Jaws, and after two weeks of nightmares (hers, not mine - I didn't get much sleep those weeks), my daughter decided to take a four year break from horror films.

Recently she's decided that as a junior high school student, she should take another look at the genre, so this time I've decided to focus on Horror comedies, and to let my wife veto any film she thinks our youngest might have difficulty handling.

So far we've checked out The Lost Boys, Fright Night, An American Werewolf in London, Alien, and a Kung Fu movie called Mr. Vampire - now I know that Alien is not a horror comedy in the strictest sense (or in any sense really, because if you found that film funny, I'd like you to stand waaaaaaaaay over there), but otherwise we've stayed with films that have more chuckles than scares.

And you know what - I'm really loving these movies! In most cases I haven't watched these movies since I was a kid, and I've got to say they are pretty amazing, good stories, good fun, and a wonderful amount of cheese.

Movie Reviews: Salt and Dinner for Schmucks

Last weekend I checked out not one but two films in the theatre (something that happens maybe once a year for me), so as a result today you get not one, but two reviews!

I went to see Angelina Jolie in Salt on Sunday with my mother, and it was a pretty cool little action flick. I never got around to seeing the Tomb Raider films, so I can't think of an action movie I've seen her in before, but I thought she did really great here. The film has all sorts of plot twists, and as following them is half the fun I'm going to avoid them. To be fair though, if you've read a lot of Robert Ludlum, the movie may not have as many twists for you. The action sequences were great, and I love the fact that the role was originally written for a guy (Tom Cruse was attached for a while) just like the Ripley character from Alien, and in both cases I could not imagine these roles played by anyone else. I know that usually I focus on Fantasy, Horror and SF, but the spy genre is swiftly becoming a personal favourite of mine.

Dinner for Schmucks on the other hand, can't be classified as a genre pick, but it was a lot of fun none the less. I saw it with my wife and our friend Trish and all three of us left the movie figuring it was time well spent. In the same sense as Salt cannot be described completely for fear of spoilers, Dinner for Schmucks has the same problem as everything builds towards the dinner and the schmucks who attend need to be seen to be believed. I was very happy to see Jemaine Clement (who I loved in Flight of the Conchords) representing everything I find exasperating about artists. The two leads are great and I left the film definitely planning to purchase it on DVD.

So there you go, two reviews for the price of one! See you Friday.

Transcribing a podcast

Hi everyone,

So after trying to get my podcast up over the weekend and not having a lot of luck (meaning, any), I've decided to simply transcribe it:

Bookmonkey: Hi and welcome to the 150th post on my fabulous blog, this is Bookmonkey speaking, and for today's post I figured I would try something different - a quick podcast, likely lasting less than five minutes and to help me out I've invited my lovely daughter Kaia to ask me some questions about my blog.

Kaia: Hi everyone! So Dad, why did you start blogging in the first place?

Bookmonkey: As a long-time reader of genre fiction, I guess I've just got a lot of opinions I'd like to share, in addition I have some aspirations to be a writer someday, and I figured if I had to put out a regular product (being 3 posts a week), my writing would get better.

Kaia: How long does it take you to write a blog post?

Bookmonkey: It basically occurs in three stages, the idea for a post can take anywhere from a minute to a couple of days, the writing of the post takes about 40 minutes and finding the pictures/links takes about 15 minutes.

Kaia: Why is your blog called Wisdom of Bookmonkey?

Bookmonkey: Short answer, when I tried to register my blog as bookmonkey it was already taken, so I tried Wisdom of Bookmonkey. Long answer, I like the orangutan librarian character from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, but I also like monkeys, plus I like to pretend I'm wise.

Kaia: Which has been your favourite post so far?

Bookmonkey: I guess the one about Junior High Girls freaking me out - basically I remembered that all the girls in my junior high years were reading V.C. Andrews books but I had never read one, after I tried Flowers in the attic, I got seriously creeped out, not just about the novel, but about the girls who really got into that series.

Kaia: What are your plans for Halloween?

Bookmonkey: I'm actually going to take the entire month of October to do a series of posts on the Twilight books; yep, I'm going to read, watch, listen, play, and even eat the phenomenon known as Twilight - as the father of two teenaged daughters I feel a responsibility to try it out and I feel that my loyal readers deserve to have my experience inflicted upon them.

Kaia: Weird - well bye everyone!

Bookmonkey: Thanks for checking out my first podcast - if it works out it may be the first in a series, otherwise I'll give videos a try!