Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, Ltd.

I’ve posted a new article on astroturfing and grassroots at Detocqueville.us.  I do intend, by the way, of getting back to analyzing Democracy in America, but for now I’ll be posting short articles are politics over there as the spirit moves me, so check it out.

School is almost upon us (my district starts back on Monday) and that means that there will be much less time for reading. Of course, that doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot of reading to do, both for school and pleasure. Here’s a rundown of some books I’ve got going at the moment:

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman: Gaiman is one of my favorite writers, and this was highly recommended to me by my mom and younger brother.  It’s basically Gaiman’s version of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.  Although I got this one primarily for pleasure, I’m seriously considering using it in one of my English classes this year (maybe in both).  On a related note, Gaiman wrote an introduction to a collection of Kipling’s fantasy and horror short stories.  I don’t remember the title, but it was at our local Barnes & Noble.

A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines: This was suggested to me by a colleague as a potential book for English II Pre AP.  I’ve read the first chapter, and I can tell already that it will be a hard but compelling read.  I’m almost certainly going to teach it this year.  In a weird coincidence, my wife Jen is going to be reading a play version of it for one of her classes this semester.

The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler: This is an analysis of Joseph Campbell’s comparative mythology for writers.  Not only is it useful for me as a writer, but the “hero’s journey” is actually on our TEKS for English II.

That’s it for now.  I’ll be posting some more about what I read as the year progresses.

When Netflix Movie Streaming works, it is wonderful.  Sure, there’s a lot of really bad stuff in the movie section, but occasionally you come across a movie you might not have rented at the video store or caught on TV that is actually pretty good.  Death of a Ghost Hunter fits somewhere in the middle of the independent movie spectrum, but the next two movies, Dark Rising and Breathing Room, sit solidly on either side of that middle.

Dark Rising is a fantasy flick that, while it has a promising beginning, soon can’t decide what type of movie it wants to be.  It begins with Vincent Vale translating an ancient text late at night.  He is interrupted by his daughter Summer, who can’t sleep.  He takes her back to her room and tells her the stereotypical bedtime story about a beautiful princess who grows up to find her prince, to which Summer precociously replies “Why does a princess need a prince?”  After Summer is asleep, Vincent returns to his text, but he inadvertantly casts a spell when he reads the words aloud.  Woken by the noise Summer runs downstairs into the study, which is flooded with green light, and screams, her father yelling her name.

I thought this beginning part was interesting; I liked the interaction between Vincent and Summer, as well as the hint about Summer’s mother being dead (the ancient text was a gift from her).  The next couple scenes also piqued my interest.  First we see three girls, one of whom is asleep, pull up to a bookstore.  The sleeping girl (Renee) is having a nightmare about another woman being experiment on in an extremely vague way.  The other two girls (Jasmine and Marlene) wake her up.

The third (and final) interesting scene concerns Jason, who is talking about his ex-girlfriend while holding a ring that she had returned to him.  I liked this scene primarily because for a while we don’t see who he’s talking to: he could be talking to himself or a friend.  The reveal of who he’s talking to, and the playout of the rest of the scene, was quite enjoyable, and gave me hopes that this movie could pull off a combination of comedy and fantasy.

Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the high point of the movie.  I won’t go into the rest of the plot, which just gets convoluted with plot points that are never fully explained (perhaps in hopes of a sequel) and campy scenes (the relationship between Jasmine and Marlene is particularly exploited).  While I do commend this movie for establishing its characters and sticking to them (something recent Syfy Saturday movie Infestation couldn’t do), what it does with those characters is uninteresting.  The camp tends to crowd out the fantastical elements, and none of it is ever very funny past the scene with Jason talking about his ex (Jasmine).  Any plot holes are likely to remain unfilled given the chances of this movie getting a sequel.

On the other hand, I was quite impressed with Breathing Room.  The movie’s basic concept (strangers thrown into a room and forced to play a sadistic game) has become cliche by now (eg. Saw and The Cube), but this movie has a lot going for it.  First, I enjoyed most of the acting; unlike Death of the Ghost Hunter, I didn’t feel like I was watching community theatre actors.  Second, I love what they did with a limited budget (reportedly only $25,000).  They kept the cast small, the movie has exactly one location, and all of the effects were practical.  People not into torture porn like Saw will be pleased to know that, while many of the deaths (and of course there are deaths) are gruesome, they’re not dragged out in excruciating detail; they’re always quick affairs, with the action often taking place in the dark and only the end result revealed.  Like all of these movies, there is a twist, and while it may not be a subtle one, I still kept wondering (even if the end result was in my top list) what was going on.

Finally, there is a style to Breathing Room that I liked a lot, which is the very clean environment and bland, business-like plaques and notes giving the “players” various rules and hints.  The first plaque that main character Tonya (#14) reads, with it’s crisp sans-serif font and friendly manner reminded me of Valve’s videogame Portal.

So, there you have it.  If you’ve been keeping score, I’ve come out slightly ahead in viewing enjoyment in this Netflix Movie Marathon.

While browsing through Netflix on my Xbox 360, I came across Death of a Ghost Hunter.  Although I had never heard of the movie, the title intrigued me, and after reading the synopsis I decided to give it a try.  Death of a Ghost Hunter concerns Carter Simms and her investigation of the Masterson House, where the Masterson family was brutally slaughtered.  The film is shot in a documentary style, with opening and closing notes attempting to establish an air of reality, similar to that of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Blair-Witch Project (which the characters of the film reference at one point).

A movie like this can fall apart very rapidly if it’s not handled right, but overall I enjoyed it.  I’ve always been disappointed by TV shows like Ghost Hunters, because  in the end you never really see anything.  After an episode, there’s still no evidence of a haunting; all you really have is people running around saying, “Did you hear that?” while tinted green by crappy night vision.  What this film does is take that basic reality-show idea and make a movie out of it, and for that it works.

Where the movie doesn’t work quite as well is in the acting and characterization.  For the most part the acting is not good.  It’s not terrible, but everything has an amateur air to it.  To the actors credit they never try to go over the top, but given the documentary feel of the movie, many of the lines are delivered in a “here’s my line” sort of way that clashes with the realistic feel the filmmakers were going for.  A fight scene between Carter and Mary Young (a stereotypical “everyone else is a sinner and going to hell” goody girl) is particularly bad.  Character-wise, there’s not a lot going on.  Carter is supposed to be the skeptic, but she never really displays that skepticism (nor is she given a chance to, as things escalate pretty quickly).  The two other members of her crew (hired by her employer, the current owner of the house) are also fairly bland; the cameraman is a wuss and the news reporter is supposed to be edgy, but their just not interesting.  Mary Young is perhaps the most annoyingly stereotypical character, however.  Her whole self-righteous act comes off extremely cliche.  Granted, it’s supposed to contrast to what happens later in the film, but it’s still cliche.

What makes this movie work for me, despite the acting and some of the lines, is the style.  The opening of the film is done as Carter’s journal entries, with her narration cut with dialogue in the scene.  I was worried that the whole movie would be like this, but the movie transitions into a more natural style once everyone’s in the house.  The build-up of weirdness is handled very well, with the situation getting more creepy all the way to the end.  The ending was also interesting, although I think it went a little too far in explaining things to the audience.

All in all, this movie did a good job of combining its basic components.  While The Blair Witch Project and Ghost Hunters are the most obvious, I think there is also a good bit of Richard Matheson’s Hell House in this as well, especially given the disturbing nature of what went on in the Masterson House.  This would be a good watch for most horror fans.

I’ve now read up to The Battle of the Labyrinth, the fourth book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan, and I wanted to do a quick rundown of my thoughts about the series before I get to the last book.

I was introduced to this series by one of my aunts, but I’ve been reading my mom’s copies.  Let me say first that even after I finish the series, I fully intend to purchase the whole series myself.  I try to read a lot of young adult (YA) fiction because I’m an English teacher, and let me first say that I think this series is excellent for middle and high schoolers.  Like Riordan’s characters, his writing style is action oriented, moving quickly through the story.  His prose is straightforward and not overly descriptive (which is a good thing).  He gives you just enough description to jump-start your imagination without spelling everything out; this is excellent for teenage readers, as many of my students suffer from a lack of imagination.

When I first started reading The Lighting Thief, I immediately began comparing Riordan’s world with American Gods by Neil Gaiman.  The two share a similar concept: as people move, their gods move with them.  Riordan’s mythology, however, is much more focused.  In American Gods, the gods of the old world moved with the immigrants to America: Slavic, Norse, African, Indian, etc.  Riordan, however, sticks with Greek mythology, and instead of moving with individual immigrants, the gods move with Western Civilization (Greece being considered the foundation of it).  For both authors this presented an interesting challenge: incorporating the old gods into current society.  Riordan does an excellent job with this, and as with his descriptions, leaves some of it up to the readers.  For example, he never fully explains where the Lotus Casino comes from, giving those familiar with Greek mythology a little treat and those not-as-familiar something to find themselves.

From a character perspective, Riordan keeps his adolescents fully adolescent: like all teenagers, they are between childhood and adulthood, capable on the one hand of adult reasoning in some situations, and falling back into childish behavior in others.  The boy-girl relationships are particularly annoying in a realistic way.  I keep wanting to scream at the characters to just talk with each other openly, but like many males (myself included), Percy Jackson is often completely oblivious to the feelings of the girls around.  Despite the teenagery-ness of it all (and that’s not a criticism), I’m interested in finding out how the current love-quadrangle plays out, given the fleeting nature of most adolescent “love” relationships.  The gods are continually annoying in their lack of maturity, but as with the teenagers this is realistic, given how they were often portrayed in the mythology: capricious, easily insulted, and filled with self-importance (much like teenagers).

There are probably a couple of points that will annoy Greek mythology purists.  The biggest thing at the moment is the mixup of Kronos/Cronus with Chronos (they weren’t actually the same), but if one really wants to get picky, Riordan’s left himself a loophole (based in the history of mythology) to explain it away: the Greeks themselves weren’t sticklers for continuity and often had contradictory stories about their gods.

In the end I highly recommend this series to all readers middle-school and above.  I can’t speak for younger readers, primarily because I have very little experience with elementary-school children, but I imagine these books would be good a more mature fourth or fifth-grader as well (parental discretion should always be in force, of course).

Chiller is like the poorer cousin of the SciFi (soon to be SyFy) channel, but I will give them credit for filling a niche in cable television.  The idea of a 24-hour horror channel is pretty cool, but I do wish, much like SciFi, that they had more quality stuff to show.  Regardless, even bad horror movies are often entertaining in their own right.  So, for this inaugural edition of “When Horror Goes Wrong,” I bring you two vampire movies: Rise: Blood Hunter and The Thirst: Blood Wars.

Rise: Blood Hunter’s only distinction is that it stars Lucy Liu as a reporter-turned-vampire/vampire hunter and Michael Chiklis (The Shield) as (what else?) as police detective Rawlins.  Liu’s character, Sadie Blake, is investigating vampire-themed parties and the deaths of two girls (one of whom is Rawlins’s daughter), and in the course of her invesitagion gets turned into a vampire by Bishop and his “family” of vampires.  After waking up in morgue, escaping, and killing a man in a homeless shelter, she attempts to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge over a busy freeway.  She is recovered, alive but beat up, by Arturo, who gives her the tools and information necessary to begin her quest for revenge.  After destroying the other vampires, Sadie eventually teams up with Rawlins to destroy Bishop, but makes Rawlins promise to kill her after she kills Bishop.  They track down Bishop, discover Rawlins’s daughter Tricia turned into a vampire (then taken down by Sadie) and then kill Bishop.  Rawlins fulfills his promise to Sadie by stabbing her with a dart, but Sadie still ends up waking up in the morgue at the end of the movie.

I decided fairly quickly after watching a bit of this movie that I didn’t want to get too deep into it.  First, the movie annoyed by beginning in media res and then flashing back to six months before the opening.  Why is this a problem?  After all, starting a story in media res is a tried-and-true device, used with great effect in everything from The Iliad to James Bond.  There is a key to in media res that this movie completely misses.  What’s going on should be action, with the intent of capturing our interest.  The beginning of this movie, instead, is an abortive and completely superfluous lesbian kiss and Sadie shooting some old guy with a crossbow.  Furthermore, after starting in media res, the action of the story should continue moving forward and any relevant information about what went before can be filled in as we go.  However, this movie’s in media res is so far into the story that we have to flashback to six months before.

Second, the first (chronological) deaths that occur happen to, predictably, two collegey girls (the requisite blonde and brunette) who die essentially because they’re stupid.  The blonde is, of course, the stupider one, going first into this shady-looking house where the vampire-themed party is taking place.  The brunette (Tricia Rawlins) is only slightly smarter, going into the house to look for her friend.  Both end up dead, the blonde permanently and Tricia only so long as it takes for her to become a vampire.

Rise: Blood Hunter suffers from a strange illness that often affects B, C, or  D movies.  Paradoxically, the movie feels long but with very little happening.  The reporter-angle is never really covered, the characters are never really developed beyond stereotypes, and the big relationship of the movie (between Sadie and Rawlins) only happens near the end.  The character of Arturo, who seems to know what’s going on with vampires, is not seen again once Sadie begins her hunt, and Rawlins gets very little screen time until the end.  There’s supposed to be some sort of dynamic in his relationship with his daughter, but because she’s also out of the movie so quickly, that’s never developed.  Finally, with the exception of the beginning, it never tries very hard at horror, or mystery, or for that matter anything else this movie is supposed to be.

The Thirst: Blood Wars is a much different movie that Rise: Blood Hunters, but still suffers from the same feeling too long with little happening problem.  Thirst gets credit for two things.  First, it has Tony Todd (Candyman) as a the head vampire, and he has a good time hamming it up.  Second, the movie’s idea of vampire hunters: people almost turned to vampires, but who resisted the urge to drink blood, faced a sunrise, and survived, is actually kind of cool.  Like a lot of low-budget movies, however, this one fails to capitalize on its idea.

The movie takes place almost entirely on a college campus, and the reason is pretty obvious: it was a cheap (or even possibly free) location.  The acting is mostly horrible (except for Todd); lines are usually just said, rather than acted.  With the exception of the last couple minutes, the picture is very flat and uninteresting; bullet-time effects are used to dubious results a couple times, but other than that there is nothing interesting visually in this film.

Story-wise, I suppose it could have been interesting with a higher budget, but as it stands it wasn’t enough to really keep me interested, primarily because the characters are just stereotypes.  There’s Will, the “hero,” who’s a wimp, Jane, his potential love-interest and basic good-girl, Ash, the goth-girl, and Rico, a military buff, and Darren, jerky jock.  Darren, it turns out, is the son of a vampire hunter (called sentries), but he never went through the total process.  He did, however, receive some training by his dad, which he basically uses to bully people around.  When Darren attempts to rape Jane, Will tries to save her and stabs Darren with a piece of glass.  Darren bites Will and begins Will’s transformation into a vampire.  I have to admit that I missed exactly why Darren was able to turn Will; I’m assuming that Darren was able to do that because of his vampire-hunter heritage, but I really don’t remember.  Regardless, a vampire chick continues the turning process and gets inside Will’s head, encouraging him to complete the turning by sucking some human blood.

The rest of the movie basically boils down to this: Will resists his transformation and for some reason is super-strong, even for a vampire.  The vampire-hunter dad seeks revenge for the murderer of his son, and they all end of at vampire-leader Julien’s (Todd) coven for a showdown.  Various rather boring fight scenes ensue, and in the end Will resists the urge to feed and sees a sunrise, become a vampire hunter himself so he can hunt down the vampire chick who was in his head.

That’s really it.  I spent most of the movie confused about who was the vampire hunter’s son (for a while I thought it was Will), I still don’t understand fully how Will turned into a vampire, and I really don’t get why Will was so powerful.  They kept referring to Darren as a sentry, but according to his dad he wasn’t really a sentry, so that was confusing.  Plus there was a whole subplot of a struggle within the vampire coven and Ash wanting to become a vampire and throwing herself at Will and another vampire in the hopes of being turned.  With all this happening, I never really got a good handle on the movie, and that, combined with the bad acting and cinematography, just makes this barely even fun enough to watch ironically.

Overall, I have rarely been disappointed more by a vampire movie than I was by these two.  Neither one really embraced the whole vampire thing and had fun with it.  Instead, they usually took themselves too seriously and were unable to pull it off.

So, after quite a long while, there’s an update over at puddleglummusic.com.  I’ve uploaded another original demo that I recorded about 3 years ago, entitled “Reveal.”  Like everything I’ve done so far its an instrumental (for the moment).  I’m planning on rerecording it this summer and polishing it up a bit more; in particular, I’m going to add real drums (well, real electronic drums instead of a drum machine) and bass guitar.  Let me know what you think (and I’m always open to constructive criticism).

I’m finally back from an 8 day trek across Texas, down to the Hill Country, then to Houston, and back up to Lubbock; in all I clocked around 1400 miles on my car.  With my internet being spotty at best, I didn’t have much of a chance to post anything, but now that I’m back for a couple weeks, I should be able to get some more stuff up.  With that in mind, I thought I’d make a few comments on the upcomming SciFi Channel name change.

I mention in one of my reposts (Adventures in Bad SciFi – Bloodsuckers) that I have had a love-hate relationship with the channel.  Both SF (hard science fiction) and sci-fi (space opera, Star Wars, and other “(insert genre)-in-space” fare) are two of my favorite genres of literature, movies, comics, and overall entertainment.  Add horror and fantasy into the mix, and you have the vast majority of my reading/watching material right there.

However, I have not really watched the SciFi Channel as much as I expected to.  That has been a result of a couple of things.  First, much of what’s on it is bad.  It’s just not quality; hence my soon-to-be-resumed series ‘Adventures in Bad SciFi,’ which was inspired by the weekly “SciFi Channel Original Movies” that play on most Saturdays.  It is true that there has always been bad, cheesy sci-fi; it’s almost a subgenre.  But unless a movie is bad enough to be entertaining, then it’s just boring.

Second, I have reached a place in my life TV-wise where I just don’t watch much serial television the way I used to.  I haven’t watched a regular series as it airs in years.  Instead, I tend to watch TV shows (such as Doctor Who) in large chunks of episodes, on DVD, DVR, or other means.  As a result, I have yet to watch much of Battlestar Galactica, which is really right up my alley, every Friday.  I’m probably going to get the DVDs and watch it that way.

Thus, my SciFi Channel viewing as been spotty.  I also forgot that the executives at the channel have added shows that are either non-sci-fi/fantasy related (ala ECW; why is wrestling on it at all?) or reality shows (Ghost Hunters got old after 10 mins of one episode; “Oh, no!  It’s dark and our cameras can’t capture crap, but we’re all freaking out anyways!!!”) and I just get tired of that crap.

So, with all that said, how do I feel about the name change?  First, it’s a stupid name.  When I looked at it, it immediately became “sifee” (short i, long e) in my head.  They claim the renaming allows them to trademark the name (which they can’t do to a genre like “sci-fi”), but the claim that the new name somehow makes the channel easier to identify is ridiculous.  However, given my general feelings about the network as it is, I’m not really surprised.  I’m not going to boycott the new SyFy or anything like that.  I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing: barely watching it at all, except maybe every Saturday evening for a really bad “original movie.”

Here I was, thinking that as soon as the summer started I’d have tons of content up on all of the sites, and I have managed to fail entirely on several fronts.  However, I’ve got several things in the works.  First, I’m planning on bringing back “Adventures in Bad Sci-Fi,” starting with the recent Sci-Fi Channel movie premier from Saturday (the title of which has escaped me).  Second, I’m going to move all of my political commentary over to detocqueville.us to give this site more focus on more fun stuff.  Third, I’m going give video a shot, once I figure out what I want to do with it.

Over on puddleglummusic.com I’m going to be uploading some new music as well as starting one of th primary reasons I began the site: to review every album in my collection.  I’m going to especially focus on all of the Christian rock and alternative that I have.  There is a lot of music from the late-80s and 90s that has become fairly obscure, and I want to draw more attention to these acts.

That’s all for now.  I’ll be much more productive once I finish Assassin’s Creed.  (I”m on the last level!  Only a couple years late!)

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Poll: When is it OK to “out” anonymous bloggers?.

The above brings up an interesting question about anonymity and the Internet.  It’s been a long time since I ever used a pseudonym or handle exclusively online; even on websites where my user name is not related to my real one, I still tend to sign posts with my first name.  I also don’t have a reason to write anonymously.  I write here the same way I would talk to anyone were we discussing the things I discuss here, and I do tend to look down on the idea of maintaining a different identity online than one maintains in real life.

So, I’m of two minds about ‘anonymous blogging.’  On the one hand, I believe that people should be real and honest wherever they are.  The lawyer from the above article, who had been publishing blog posts under the name ‘Publius,’ (seriously, couldn’t he have come up with something original?) felt that what he was saying online was something he preferred his family and colleagues didn’t know about.  I have to admit that I immediately question why that is.  I’m not saying that he doesn’t have his reasons, I just think that speaks of some level of disfunction in his other relationships.

On the other hand, I don’t think thta it’s usually anyone elses’s business if someone chooses to be anonymous online, and there are definitely ciricumstances where that would be necessary.  For example, a political dissident from an oppressive state would certainly have very good reasons for remaining anonymous, as their activities could bring real harm to their family and friends.

I think the line at which ‘outing’ somone online is fairly clear.  In the majority of cases, it’s not alright.  To out someone requrires you to place yourself in a position of judgement on someone else, and that’s not a good thing.  I feel the same way about people like Perez Hilton who make their job to decide for others when they should be ‘outed’ as homosexuals (which in most cases is much more serious than one’s family finding out your not as conservative politically as they think).  If the anonymous person is using that for harmful reasons (forms of defamation, for example), then the line has been crossed.

Overall I agree with Ed Morrissey’s analysis.  I think Ed Whelan overreacted and overstepped his bounds.