The Alloy of Law

Dark Carnival

I wish I read the Deathlands books a little more often than I do, although the truth of this matter is you could insert any ongoing series[1] I am reading and not yet caught up to live publication for, and that would still be a true statement. I have an embarrassment of reading wealth, I guess? Kind of.

But as much as I enjoy reading them, they’re getting harder and harder to review, because of how much continuity is piling up. I have read 14 of these over the past 7ish years (they are published quarterly, I think, so yes, this means I’m falling behind), and they’re so far not the least bit episodic. Old enemies come back, the cast changes over time, the past (both the written past and the characters’ pasts before the series opens) has consequences. All that, on top of post-apocalypse porn with a deep sci-fi bent and surprisingly[2] egalitarian gender parity, and yeah, of course I want to keep reading more.

This one, leaving out all the piled up plot, centers around dire happenings in and around an operational amusement park in Florida that is conspicuously not DisneyWorld. Also, though, let me leave you this hilarious dispatch from the 22nd Century:

Doc returned to his own room and watched some vids of a television series that Boss Larry piped through. Ryan and Krysty tried to watch it, but it seemed a plot of such staggering complexity that they gave up on it.

“It wasn’t the giant and the dwarf,” Krysty said, lying back on the huge bed. “Nor the damned fine coffee and the cherry pie. It was the woman who was dead, then Japanese, then alive again.”

[1] I mean, not Anita Blake. Seriously. But otherwise, yes.
[2] Both for the genre and the publication date. And I’m not saying it’s perfect, it’s just a lot better than could have possibly been predicted, and objectively closer to the good side of the scale than the bad side.

Project Almanac

Did you ever see The Butterfly Effect? The one with Kelso from the 70s Show, right before he turned into Ashton Kutcher? If not, definitely watch that instead. But if you have, it’s probably been quite a while, and you may be ready to walk that territory again. Project Almanac is an MTV movie about a bunch of high school students who find themselves via quirks of causality in possession of the ability to time travel.

Then, they use it to do the kinds of things high school students as envisioned by MTV would do (pass chemistry, go to Lollapalooza, you know), until, inevitably, things start to go wrong. Which is what the movie is really about.

I liked it well enough, probably because of how much I liked the other movie in the first place? I assume it was meant to be neither an indictment nor a non-judgmental representation of how high school popularity works, but instead accidentally represented and indicted that process. And from a time travel logistics perspective, well, I had issues. They used and tossed out causality pretty much at whim, which is annoying simply because time travel logic needs to be internally consistent. Pick your method, but then stay there. That’s all I ask.

Like I said, the only reason to watch this is if you can’t watch the Butterfly Effect for the first time instead. Not because Project Almanac was bad; it wasn’t. It just wasn’t nearly good enough.

Movie 43

What I actually wanted to watch last night was Project X, but it wasn’t on Netflix. But the reason I wanted to watch it was that I was watching Iron Man earlier in the evening and thought the Vanity Fair reporter looked familiar. Turns out she didn’t, but I saw Movie 43 in her credits, which reminded me of Project X. Because, you know, generic titles and all.

Movie 43 is a series of comedic shorts tied together by a movie pitch plot[1], and… well, let me offer you this quick guide. If you’ve ever wanted to see Anna Faris as a coprophiliac, or if you’ve ever wanted to see Halle Berry make guacamole with a breast prosthesis, or if you’ve ever wanted to see Hugh Jackman being a literal dickhead, you should watch this movie. If you actively want to avoid seeing those things, you should not.

This doesn’t feel like a “middle ground” type of situation, you know?

[1] No, seriously, it’s not a V/H/S sequel, and I’m pretty sure this is not the only kind of movie I watch anymore? Pretty sure.

Ghost Story

V/H/S/2

I know what you’re thinking. Why am I reading a review about a crazy former hot werewolf when I was promised a review explaining how V/H/S maybe actually does make sense as a series?[1] Answer: I can’t[2] review things out of order, can I? And I watched that other movie in between because my girlfriend was over, and she had not even seen V/H/S, so I couldn’t very well throw her right into the middle of things, could I?

But then, a night or two later: here we are. The open question is, does V/H/S/2[3] make a damn lick of sense, and, even trickier, does it retroactively make its precedent make sense? That’s what we in the radio business call a tease[4]. First, I will say that all of the short films that tied the sequel together were as skin-crawly and engrossing as last time. (Well, one of them had a monster that should never have been shown closely and in slow movement, but that was like the last 15 seconds and did not ruin the Lovecraftian splatterfest that had gone before.) I don’t know if it’s that most horror movies are too long and the compactness packs a punch, or if it’s that the first person nature of all found footage movies makes me identify more closely with what’s going on, or what, but these stories, one and all, were genuinely disturbing.

Okay, I’m doing it for real this time. Yes, there is a small degree to which the cohesion stories about finding these houses full of screens and creepy tapes does make sense now that did not exist last time, and it even sort of works retroactively. It’s a pretty small degree, but still, if you were really here because you desperately wanted to understand the underground world of tapes of supernatural events, you would hate these movies I think for their inability to deliver. And since that’s the only way they don’t deliver, well then.

[1] Well, correction: I know what you were thinking.
[2] Well, correction: I don’t
[3] These movies are irritating as fuck to type out, b/t/w.
[4] Well, correction: they in the radio business.[5]
[5] I know what you’re thinking this time, too. And no, I really have no idea what I’m doing, much less why. You gets what you pays for.

88 (2014)

Remember Ginger Snaps? I do, very fondly, even if my viewing of the original movie barely predated my starting to review things. Remember Ginger? ….no, not from Gilligan’s Island, this Ginger, the one I was literally just talking about? My point is, Katharine Isabelle’s face was tugging at my recollection the whole time I was watching 88 on the strength of its Memento-like description on Netflix.

To be clear, this is no Memento. But it does have a cool fragmented parallel story structure where you can’t tell what’s real. The hot girl in the poster (Ginger, you guys, why is this not sinking in?) has obviously had a psychotic break[1], but still, something you’re seeing must be real, surely! And it’s pretty fun trying to figure out what. Long story short, I’ve made bigger Netflix mistakes than this.

[1] Sounds like a spoiler, possibly is a spoiler, but they say it in text at the front of the movie before you’ve even seen her come to herself, confused, in front of a stack of pancakes.

V/H/S

Fables: The Great Fables Crossover

The thing that makes very little sense about The Great Fables Crossover is that it was categorized as a Fables rather than a Jack of Fables trade. From a character sense, there’s no denying that every character crossed back and forth freely between the serieses, but from a plot perspective, the threads of the ongoing Fables plot (which as you will no doubt not recall is the aftermath of victory against the Adversary) barely budge, whereas the threads of the ongoing Jack plot are finally completely wrapped up, leaving one to perhaps wonder why Jack still needs two more (three more?) volumes of his own.

Be that as it may, the stories are still pretty great and the stakes have never been higher. When you have a guy who can (and plans to!) end reality and start over with just a few strokes of his pen, well, I suppose it’s no wonder that a plot is getting wrapped up. You know, one way or another.

I feel ever so slightly bad that I’m being a bit cavalier as to the outcome of the endeavour, but there are two things to consider. First: granted how very meta characters based on literary concepts are in the first place, I think it’s fair to say that all of creation being wiped out and written anew is a possible outcome that could still allow for more stories to be told. Second, and far more relevant: I am staring at 17 subsequent Fables trades that I have not yet read on my shelf. It’s hard not to be cavalier under the literal weight of that metaphorical onslaught on my psyche.

Jupiter Ascending

While choosing which poster image to use for this movie, I came across the knowledge that its original release date was mid July. I’m not sure if it was pushed back from 2014 or pushed up for this year, and honestly, it doesn’t matter. Either way, a lot of what you need to know about the movie is contained in that simple fact. Summer blockbusters that get moved to February are flawed in a way that the studio did not expect.

Jupiter Ascending is deeply flawed. It reminds me of nothing so much as a book adaptation where the director was so focused on cramming as much cool scenery and as many important events into the allotted running time that they forgot people who had not read the book would be seeing the movie, and might need some hint as to what is actually going on in and around all these cool places and events.[1] But no, it’s from an original script.

That said, everything eventually does make sense, it’s just that things are told out of order, and not in a way that would be excused by the audience learning what’s up alongside Mila Kunis, like they did with Neo in the Matrix. I think it’s destined to be a cult classic if enough people give it the time of day over the next couple years, and not because it’s bad (or at least, not just because it’s bad). See, it’s like this. If you want a movie that has the grand unified theory of conspiracies, including everything from the Reptilians to the Greys to Elisabeth Bathory just for starters, this is that movie. And a movie like that, if done even half competently[2], is going to get a cult following. Mark my words.

(Shameful admission: I kind of dug it. Maybe because Mila Kunis was named after the smart member of the Three Investigators?)

[1] And believe me, it’s a very, very pretty movie, if perhaps not quite as cool as the Wachowskis expected it to be.
[2] Cheap shot or not, half competently is pretty much right on the nose.

Shards of Delirium

Fragments of Delight