Genre Character of the Week: Evan (The Time Traveler's Room-mate)

Last weekend I went out with some friends to see the nominees for the Live-Action Short category of the 2012 Oscars. The experience was actually pretty cool as usually when the Live Action-Short and Animation-Short categories are announced I’ve seen exactly none of the nominees.

Out of the live action shorts, my favourite was Time Freak, a time travel comedy about a guy named Evan who finds out that his room-mate has created a time machine.

Evan comes across as a good friend, and a guy who can clearly see through his buddy’s schemes and plans without a lot of difficulty.

As the film was short, I can’t say much else without spoilers, but if you have the option, definitely check out this little gem as it was a whole lot of fun!

Genre at the 2012 Oscars

Often I'm asked by friends and co-workers why it is I get so excited about the Academy Awards every year considering how little genre is represented in the nominations. Basically if you remove Art Design, Makeup, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Cinematography, Visual Effects and Music (Original Score), you've basically cut out every movie involving Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction.

This year, however, after working my way through seven of the nine Best Picture nominees and the entire Live-Action and Animated short categories there were actually three films which stood out to me as genre films worth watching.

So here you go - my cheat sheet of the 2012 Academy Awards if you just want the good genre stuff.

1. Watch the Live Action-Short and Animated Short films Time Freak, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, and A Morning Stroll. These films involve time travel, mad science and even (SQUEEE!) Zombies.

2. Give the movie Midnight in Paris a shot. Considering I've tended to shy away from Woody Allen films in the past (They all seem to merge into one amorphous blob of neurotic New York self-indulgence for me), I really fell in love with this movie about a man (Owen Wilson) in love with the past and then getting a chance to visit it.

Things I've Noticed: Classics and Genre Fiction

*A quick note – When I say Classics and Genre Fiction I’m not talking Classics of Genre Fiction (Asimov, Matheson, Tolkein) but am instead talking about Classics (Homer, The Bible, Plato) and modern genre fiction.

For years I’ve had the feeling that I should be reading classics of literature, but where to start? There are tonnes of books which can be considered classics and honestly, in my life I am not going to have the time to read them all. A few years ago I received a gift from my BFF Mike and his lovely wife Trish which ended up being one of my favourite books ever.

How To Read a Book by Mortimer Adler (1972). The book itself focuses on how you can take a skill the literate world takes for granted, reading, and how to do it more effectively. It covers how to read histories, fiction, school texts, science and mathematics books and a whole lot more. In the back of the book he gives a reading list that starts at the beginning of Western Civilization and moves forward to the 1960s.

So my current plan is to move through his list (you can see it here) at one book a month. February’s book is The Iliad and so far I really love it. The story is nearly 3000 years old and involves magic, gods, and the kind of violence I haven’t seen since reading Richard Laymon’s The Cellar. I’m reading the book a chapter a day and honestly I’m really enjoying it. The fact that the story is referred to in over and over again throughout classic and modern literature is just a bonus. Next month for me is The Oddessy, and after that I’ll be checking out Aesop’s Fables.

It’s just kind of cool, at the beginning of this project that when I step away from Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction to read some stuff that is “good for me” I’m met with a significant amount of Horror and Fantasy.

Genre Character of the Week: Ico

So as I’ve been working my way through the PS3 catalogue of games I came across one called ICO/Shadow of the Colossus at in a bin at a grocery store for $20. I figured that although the games listed were PS2 games upgrade to work on the PS3, they came out to $10 each and hopefully someone thought they were good enough to be put on the newer system. (NOTE: After writing the review, it became apparent to me that both games actually rank highly on many gamers best games ever lists – but I was unaware of this until after writing the post)

Anyway, I haven’t touched Shadow of the Colossus yet, but I did just finish the other one and can now introduce you to this week’s genre character: ICO.

The game is incredibly minimal in back story, so here is just about everything you know about the character: he’s about ten-years-old, he comes from a village in some sort of fantasy world, he has horns (see picture), and because he has horns, his village has sacrificed him to die of starvation in some creepy sort of statue in a giant spooky castle.

Due to a mild earthquake the statue breaks, freeing Ico, who then proceeds to try and escape from the castle. Along the way he finds a strange girl named Yorda who he spends the majority of the game trying to help escape (she can be both intriguing and incredibly frustrating throughout), and the majority of the game is sort of like Myst but with fighting involved. Basically you solve puzzles and move Ico and the girl through the castle looking for a way to escape.

Although you (the player) use the character of Ico to solve the various puzzles to escape from the castle, as a character this little kid is really smart and very dedicated to rescuing his friend (even though they don’t speak the same language).

In the end the game took me two weekends to finish (so it was pretty short), but at the same time it was visually stunning and well worth the purchase, and for me a big part of that was due to the title character.

Book Review: Before I Go To Sleep

One of the things I love best about my wife is that she is not afraid to stop me from doing whatever I’m currently doing and then tell me what I should be doing instead. Okay, maybe that bothers me a little when it comes to chores vs. Videogames, but when it comes to reading, she’s the best.

Case in point, I was about to start Jack Whyte’s The Eagles Brood on Tuesday (which I’ll be reading next week) when she thrust a book at me and said;

“Stop reading whatever you’re reading, you have to read this!”

And then she gave me a copy of S.J. Watson’s Before I Go To Sleep.

Before the review proper – Thanks Hon, you were, as always, right about the fact that I would love the book you suggested, and if it wasn’t for you I’d probably still only be readingDragonlance novels (Sorry Dragonlance lovers, I’m mostly saying that she opened my eyes to a whole new world of genre fiction).

Anyway, Before I Go To Sleep is a first Novel, and like the last first novel I read Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box, it is fun, raw and has introduced me to a very engaging new voice in fiction.

I guess I can explain the novel as follows – think of the 2004 romantic comedy Fifty First Dates, but imagine the story is a thriller and told from the amnesiacs point of view.

I really want to say more, but I don’t want to ruin anything. It is really, really good.

Go read this book.

Things I've Noticed: I'm Starting to become a Zombie Expert

I once heard that if you want to be an expert in anything you need to spend 10,000 hours studying it. When I think of the things I’ve spent even close to that time studying the list gets pretty small (Obvsiously not including my wife, kids, schooling, etc.l.

1) Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

2) Fantasy Stories

3) Horror Stories

4) Science Fiction Stories

5) Reading

6) Watching Television

7) Watching Movies

After that, there are a few things I’ve studied for maybe 5000 hours; comic books, vampire stories, role playing games and zombie-themed horror stories

For Christmas last year I received a Zombie-themed desk calendar, which has been giving me new quotes, books, movies and games related to zombies for the past 47 days. Slowly but surely I’m building my knowledge of zombies in popular culture and this nifty little calendar his given me a lot of interesting starting points.

Now here’s my question for today – we (well, most of us) have losts of chunks of 10,000 hours to go in our lives – what exactly would you like to spend them on towards becoming an expert at?

For me (right now) it’s zombie trivia and knowledge, but eventually I’ll want to add Grandparenting, swimming, and other stuff to the list.

So I’ll leave you with the best advice I can give you on the topic, in the immortal words of any number of zombies...

BRAINS!!!

Read into that what you will.

Genre Character of the Week: Gully Foyle

Sometimes the characters that interest me are those that have such an incredible focus that I can’t help but stare in awe and wonder at what they are doing, Edmond Dantes and Jim Profit both come to mind, but I’ve got to say in all my readings of genre fiction, I have never come across a character quite like the protagonist of Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, Gulliver Foyle.

Gully starts out as a man adrift, before the events of the novel begin, he is described as a nobody – Education: None, Skills: None, Merits: None, Recommendations: None. But then when his ship the Nomad, is attacked and he lasts as the sole survivor for 170 days afloat in deep space something begins to change. First of all, another ship arrives and he may be rescued, but then for reasons unknown to him the rescue ship simply leaves, marooning him to certain death. Suddenly given a direction in life, Gully begins to change, and the change is spectacular.

Like Jim Profit, Gully is not a nice person – through the course of the book he commits any number of terrible crimes. But his simple drive, to get revenge on those who left him for dead on the Nomad, just keeps me turning the pages.

I suppose at some point I should actually list my top ten Horror, SF and Fantasy novels on my blog – it’s tricky though as there is so much good stuff out there.

One thing I can say for sure however is that The Stars My Destination has been on my top ten list ever since I first read it, and a huge part of that comes down to the character of Gully Foyle.