Bizarre maps

Check out the Bizarre Map Challenge hosted by SDSU. 

My favorite of the lot is i spy: missed connections in burlington, vermont.  Sure it has local interest for me, but it's also a really original idea, it has a clean look, and it's immediately clear from looking at the map what it's showing.  A Postcard from Our Little Part(s) of the World is pretty good, but thematically similar to the "staycation" one.  Weighing Their Words has a good look, but is yet another U.S. map (boring).  Earth in Reverse would be a decent second choice.  The rest all have problems -- too much clutter, I had to read the description to understand what the map was showing, and/or bad color choices.

Spartacus (1960)

A movie this good needs a better soundtrack.  As it stands, it's by turns comical (the rebellious slave's training sequence on Vesuvius sounds like a western, and there's a moment, I can't pinpoint it now, when it sounds like a 60's showtune -- sorry, that doesn't cut it for epic Ancient World fare), painful (the 8-measure love theme waltz that's played *every time* Jean Simmons gets screen time or Kirk Douglas has tender or reflective thoughts), and dull (the overture, entr'acte, just about everywhere else).

Mockingbird; Stewart, Sean; 1998

Another Nebula finalist, and a deserving one.  Here I was, all ready to rip SFWA for not having honored either Mockingbird or Perfect Circle with the Nebula award, and then when I looked up the finalists those years, found that he had lost to Parable of the Talents (which, while good, was really a belated honoring of Parable of the Sower) and Paladin of Souls (which I liked just as much as Perfect Circle) respectively.  Oh, well.  Bad timing, Sean.

Unfortunately, since Perfect Circle, Stewart's bibliography consists of a Star Wars novel and a trilogy of YA ARGs.  A guy's gotta eat, but one wonders if a well-deserved Nebula would have given his works enough of a sales boost to keep him writing the good stuff (though given that the wonderful Nicola Griffith hasn't published a SF novel since winning in 1995, who knows?).  As it stands, I need to look into his earlier stuff. 

Note: posted 4/24/2013, backdated because to when I finished the book and wrote up my original notes.

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Back in '98, we saw Shakespeare in Love twice in the theater, which is high praise from us.  More than eleven years pass, and we fell in love all over again.  It's got a script, despite the lack of iambic pentameter, worthy of inclusion among Shakespeare's Histories (after all, it is about as historically accurate). And that Joseph Fiennes -- does he look great running in period costume or what?


Gwynneth Paltrow's role in Shakespeare in Love is probably best remembered for "stealing" the Oscar from Cate Blanchett.  Now, I love Cate Blanchett's acting. I'd watch Cate in anything, though Charlotte Gray was rough going.  I'd argue that Cate is the better actress.  That said, Gwynneth Paltrow's performance in this film is done a great disservice by the thought that her Academy Awards win is stolen goods.  She is wonderful throughout, but most especially in the way she looks at Fiennes while dressed as a boy in the first scene in she is rehearsing at the theater.

Twelfth Night (1996)

There's a great cast here**, and they tried really hard to make Twelfth Night watchable, but the play just isn't very well constructed. The whole Malvolio subplot adds nothing to the overall story and is frankly depressing rather than funny.

** In fact, I'm looking right now for other movies with Imogen Stubbs (Viola) and gravely disappointed that there isn't much there.  That's a shame; she's great.

Up the Line (Silverberg, Robert) 1969

I preferred this to The Masks of Time, but the 1969 Silverberg still needs to get himself a girlfriend and figure out that they aren't just marvelous sex toys.  Ahem, and now please pretend that the following plot summary could be sung to the tune of Istanbul (not Constantinople):


Well-to-do Greeks in 1095
Live in Constantinople, not Istanbul
So if you've a date with your great-great ancestor
She'll be waiting in Constantinople.


reading completed 4/11/2010

The Masks of Time (Silverberg, Robert) 1968

I have the Gollancz paperback edition which has the "Silverberg at his best" quote from Analog on the front.  I can only assume they must be referring to Dying Inside, which is dated, but his best work.  The Masks of Time is good for 60's sci fi, but not remotely among Silverberg's best.

One of the central themes of The Masks of Time is a physicist's (Jack Bryant) moral quandary in which he's worried that publishing his dissertation, which would unlock the secrets of how to convert matter to energy in a safe and controlled way (thus putting essentially limitless free energy in the hands of individuals) would "smash the world's money structure."  Hunh?  Energy is just one of the world's industries.  For the average joe, free energy means that their utility bills go away, and that's only after enough of these new energy conversion devices are built that energy actually becomes free to give away.  Jack's friend (Leo Garfield, the protagonist) correctly and sanely points out all the future benefits to limitless free energy, and yet Jack reads up on Oppenheimer and frets about "a fifty-year upheaval while the new order of things was taking shape."  Really?  You're comparing your problems to Oppenheimer's?  Teller suggested the A-bomb might cause the atmosphere to catch fire and you're worried free energy might cause fifty years of "upheaval", after which the world should be hunky dory and better than it was before?  Yeesh, and I thought Silverberg's other characters were neurotic.

At any rate, his quandary is tied up with the arrival of Vornan-19, a supposed visitor from 2999 (the book is set in 1999) that the government suspects is a fake, but wants to use to quell the fin de siecle rioting of the Apocalyptists.  They put together a team of top scientists to pump him for information about the future; however, even the U.S. Federal Government couldn't be this incompetent at putting together a team to interview the man from the future.  After two weeks of contact with Vornan-19, their only "intelligence" on the future is a blood sample taken when he submits to a medical examination in order to use the facilities at a government-run brothel?!  If they are going to so thoroughly meet with failure, then the book should center around their relationships to one another, but instead of being *shown* their relationships, we're mostly *told* about them... and in classic 60's style, the two women on the committee are juvenile male stereotypes; one's a whore and the other is frigid, but soon to be turned into a whore by the man from the future.  Argh.  Would these authors please just grow up?  Likewise, we're told about Vornan's magnetic personality, but little that we're shown about him is at all compelling.  Stay away from characters you can't deliver on, or at least keep them as remote as possible.  

By this time, I've lost all serious interest and am simply marking time.  It's a fairly quick read. 

completed reading 4/4/10

Buffy

This is the first time in the past three months that we haven't had a Buffy the Vampire Slayer disk out from Netflix (we'd finally decided to work through the series), so this is a haphazard dump of thoughts on the series.  

To start, I saw the Buffy movie in '92 and was disappointed that they couldn't decide whether to play it as camp or straight with a side of humor.  Whatever the movie's flaws, however, Kristy Swanson *is* Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and though Sarah Michelle Gellar is very good, she doesn't own the role quite like Kristy Swanson did.

Seasons 1 and 2 of Buffy were very well written with a strong core of characters, culminating (for me) with the "I Only Have Eyes for You" episode.  I see why Joss Whedon has a following.  Still, the writing of the Buffy character early in season 1 is a little shaky with respect to her "Buffy"-ness.  She's a vampire slayer and good friend, but not much of a "Buffy" (they work hard to fix this impression late in season 1 and in season 2, but it never really entirely works; this is fine, Sarah Michelle Gellar is still very good).  Xander is particularly well written in the first two seasons (because he's Joss Whedon's image of himself as a high-schooler), but for some reason is an annoying jerk for the first half of season 3, and then suddenly turns back into the old Xander midway through the season.  M'kay. 


Despite Xander's character issues**, Season 3 starts well, but gets choppy with the character churn that seems inevitable (Angel and Cordelia headed for another show), and Faith's slide into evil is not very convincing.  I could see her ending up doing bad things and being secretive, tortured and regretful about it (sort of like how Buffy gets in Season 6, only with better reason for feeling tortured and regretful; I mean, come *on*, Buffy, you're really all torn up because it turns out you like kinky sex with vampires?), but Faith takes an absolute glee in doing evil that should only come with the loss of one's soul.  The mayor is mostly an irritating character, and his genuine fatherly feelings toward Faith seem less like real character development than a desperate effort to make him more interesting and Faith's conversion to evil more credible.  Invincible adversaries are boring; what worked in Season 2 was that Spike, Drusilla, and Angelus could be hurt.  The season does end on a high note with the battle against the mayor; the cooperation among the high school classmates was great.  And "The Wish" is a great episode.


Season 4 starts off fairly well, with Buffy's favorite class, potential love interest, and secret government organization all converging into one storyline.  Unfortunately, Adam is near-invincible.  BORING.  And Oz got dumped from the show.  At least Anya is turning out to be a great addition to the cast and the chip in Spike's head is a brilliant way to have him interact with the Scooby gang.  The "Hush" episode is my favorite after the musical... and perhaps "I Only Have Eyes for You".

Season 5, episode 1, we meet Dawn at the end of the episode.  Fridge.  Nuked.  Thank goodness we're netflixing these b/c we would have dropped the series right there if we were watching it week to week.  There's another invincible enemy.  Two full episodes devoted to Buffy's mom's death, with plenty of screen time devoted to lead-in.  Could this possibly get more depressing?  Is this Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Generic Gloomy Teen Drama?  Anya's and Spike's furthering character development are the only things keeping me going.


After the first few episodes, the League of Dorks seems set to be the main Season 6 villains, which should be a hugely fun return to the feel of the first two seasons, and then we're treated to the tremendous "Once More with Feeling" and excellent follow-up "Tabula Rasa" episodes, and... then it all quickly falls apart into Buffy over-worrying about her kinky sex fetish, Xander leaving Anya at the altar, Buffy working her minimum wage job to make ends meet (could we at least have a scene in which the Watchers council wants to solve all her money problems for her in exchange for getting back into her life, and her rejecting that?  or better yet, her accepting their offer?), Warren becoming an uber-sexist accidental killing machine (thus killing all the fun we should have been having with the League of Dorks), Buffy infantilizing Dawn (would someone please acknowledge that Dawn is the same age that Xander and Willow were when they started helping Buffy?  and that Dawn is just a wee bit more coordinated than Willow?), and Tara accidentally getting shot by the magic bullet from the grassy knoll.  I guess this really is Generic Gloomy Teen Drama.  I don't even care about Spike anymore; we're just showing up for Anya now.


So heading into Season 7, we're just happy that it'll all soon be over.  It starts well enough with the the potential slayers slowly gathering in Sunnydale.  Then we meet the incredibly tough ur-vampire who seems invincible (BORING), though it turns out that Buffy simply needed to hit it harder, or something.  And there's a lot of tiresome Spike torture porn.  But Principal Wood is an interesting character, and Andrew is, somewhat shockingly, a real asset to the regular cast, and "The Storyteller" and "Lies My Parents Told Me" are really good back-to-back episodes featuring them.  Then... we get Caleb, who is near-invincible (BORING) and incredibly sexist to boot.  Just how many times is Buffy gonna get called a bitch in these last two seasons?  Could the writers be a little more creative here?


In summation: writing-wise, there were two great seasons, a bunch of individually superior episodes, too many great scenes/lines to count, and... an overall story arc that could be really interesting if it were tightened up and some of the poor decisions reworked.  The cast is excellent throughout, though several of the major villains are dull.


** He never again manages to captures my interest, except through his relationship with Anya in seasons 4 and 5 and the first half of season 6.  It's not because he doesn't have superpowers (Angel is plenty boring with them), he's just... kinda there.

Josie and the Pussycats (2001)

Should I really be admitting to having netflixed this? Should I admit to thinking "3 Small Words" is pretty good for manufactured music?  Sure, why the heck not.  The greatest embarrassment here is having waited 9 years to indulge.


Anyway, the basic premise of the movie is how you should stay true to yourself and not let the inessentials come between you and your friends and your love, and the major subplot driving this is basically the "Cold Slither" episode of the 80's G.I. Joe cartoon, only with Parker Posey in the role of Cobra Commander.  Yeah, that's about right.  


The varying levels of marketing in the movie is ingenious.  Broadly speaking, it's aimed at my generation at 29, fondly remembering the original cartoon series and hoping it couldn't be worse than Josie and the Pussycats in Space, and of course they're hoping to get teens to come see it.  But within the movie, the overarching "message"  is supposed to decry crass consumerism and the encroachment of advertising into every aspect of our lives, so in order to make this point they've gone over the top in product placement.  I like it, and now I want a Coke can with a picture of me on it.


I'll also admit that the cast is actually pretty good, with special kudos to Alan Cumming, who cheerfully shepherds the plot from beginning to end so that there is some semblance of story arc.  The Pussycats are also well cast, and Tara Reid gets Melody hilariously right.  Alexander and Alexandra are all wrong; they don't fit well into the plot, and should have been jettisoned once the Pussycats were signed by Alan (Cumming, not M).


The script, as to be expected, is very uneven.  I actually wanted more music video footage.  Some scenes are pleasantly surprisingly good, and aspire to some kind of pop culture artistry, like the framing of the Pussycats in a CD jewel case as they cross the street at night, in Abbey Road crossed with the Scooby gang style, as Meatloaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" plays.  Others are hackneyed plot expositions -- that would be most scenes with Parker Posey, actually.  It's painful.  Could we drop the Cold Slither plot, swap in Meryl Streep for Parker Posey and have her simply play the Miranda Priestly of Record Executives? 

An Education (2009)

This is a good little film with an excellent cast and magnificent editing.  Every scene and practically every spoken line unravels something more about the characters and there are no wasted moments.  I seriously respect filmmakers who realize that what they have is a good 95 minute film and cut out the 25 minutes of chaff that would make it a tiresome 2 hour film.

Nuking the Fridge

I was going to write about how when we finally netflixed the 4th Indiana Jones movie, we immediately thought that "Nuke the Fridge" should replace "Jump the Shark".   Apparently it was a common reaction. Well, at least Cate Blanchett seemed to be having fun.