The Origin of LITTLE PEOPLE, BIG GUNS, Or "A Lie Can Travel Around the World and Back Again While The Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes”

There's a supposed quote from American author Mark Twain about how, "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." Many times the first media report about something, regardless of its accuracy or whether the complete story is told, will travel far and people will ignore the follow-up. 

This article from NPR discusses the early coverage of the Sandy Hook school shooting, including how somebody else was mistakenly identified as the shooter and how some early reports claimed school officials actually let the shooter into the school. Sunil Tripathi was initially identified as one of the Boston Marathon bombers, only for it to come out later he'd committed suicide long before the bombing. More recently and speaking from my personal experience, I initially thought the episode with the students from Covington Catholic High School and Native American activist Nathan Phillips just involved a confrontation between them--the involvement of a third party (a group of street preachers affiliated with the Black Hebrew Israelites) didn't appear in any of the news I'd read until some time later. This article from The Atlantic breaks down how the major media failed to point out that the BHI preachers had initially confronted the Native Americans and then attempted to redirect the whole situation toward the Catholic students, instead focusing on student Nick Sandmann, who appeared to be smirking at Phillips while he plays the drums. Several media outlets ended up settling lawsuits with Sandmann, whom I remember being vilified online at the time (to the point the school closed due to threats) and even now.

And this is something that applies to my own writing, in particularly my horror-comedy novella Little People, Big Guns from Deadite Press. I got the initial idea for LPBG from a news story that claimed TV chef Gordon Ramsay had a gay dwarf porn star lookalike named Percy Foster, who was found dead in a badger den. However, the Huffington Post did some digging and found that not only had local police no idea what was going on, but nobody in the porn industry had heard of Mr. Foster, who should be more well-known given his stature and appearance. Furthermore, the initial reporting on the incident came from The Sunday Sport, a British tabloid that, among other things, has claimed a WWII bomber had been found on the Moon. However, before this had happened the initial reporting went viral. The story circulated online--here's a Facebook post from 2014 about it and here is a 2018 article from The Daily Mail. 2018--that's seven years after the incident was debunked. Lies can live forever on the Internet it seems.

However, even though it turns out the whole incident with Mr. Foster didn't actually happen, that got my creative juices flowing. The initial story idea (which just focused on the little people and the killer badgers), after some suggestions from then-editor of Deadite Jeff Burk, soon grew into a bizarre almost true-crime saga involving terrorists, car chases, and even an unnaturally large and dangerous animal. If you like your horror spiced with comedy or if your sense of humor trends very dark, I would recommend checking out Little People, Big Guns.

My Late 2021 And Early 2022 Convention Schedule

Time to round out 2021 and ring in the first quarter of 2022 with the book signings and appearances I've scheduled so far. This blog post may change as I add events or if COVID leads to event cancellations again.

On Saturday, 12/18, I will be signing at Posman Books at Ponce City Market from 1-3 PM. Back when I had just The Thing in the Woods in the fall of 2017, I had a pretty decent signing there and I'm hoping that lightning strikes twice. Especially since now I've got a bunch more books to sell. :) If you want to let me know you're coming, RSVP on the Facebook event here. Bookstore signings tend to be pretty lucrative for me, since there isn't a table cost like there is for conventions.

As far as conventions are concerned, I will have a hall table at the Atlanta Steampunk Exposition February 11-13, 2022. I might also be speaking on writing-related panels, but that's still being worked out. Since AnachroCon has closed up shop, ASE is consolidating the Atlanta steampunk convention scene. :) And it's been two years since a big steampunk convention in Atlanta, so hopefully there'll be people eager to spend money. This will be the first time the Atlanta steampunk crowd will be seeing The Atlanta Incursion and "Son of Grendel," since those were published in 2020, months after AnachroCon. Hopefully they'll like the new additions.

The final convention I have scheduled so far is Toylanta 2022, slated for March 18-22. Here's where you can buy tickets online. I made a decent amount last time I was there, and with COVID vaccinations being more available and COVID numbers in Georgia declining (fingers crossed that Omicron won't change that), hopefully there'll be more people there. I attended the 2021 Toylanta and haven't put out anything new since then (more on that later), so hopefully there'll be lots of new people.

Between my busy teaching schedule and the fact I've fallen dreadfully behind on producing new books (I wanted to have the sequel to Battle for the Wastelands out sometime this year, but I'm at most halfway through it), I think I'm going to try to limit appearances to one convention or so per month. Also, given how quickly $0.35 per mile adds up, I'm going to try to limit my appearances to metro Atlanta until I've got more books to sell.

If you don't anticipate making it to any of these events, email me at mquinn1984@gmail.com and we can discuss an individual order. I can mail signed books anywhere in the U.S. thanks to Media Mail. Non-US orders I can do, but I'll need to build in additional shipping costs.

LABYRINTH Is HELLRAISER For Kids

The other day I watched Labyrinth on the elliptical at the gym and while ironing some clothes. The thought hit me that it has a lot in common with, surprisingly enough, Hellraiser and its sequel Hellraiser 2: Hellbound. Beware spoilers for all three films.

Firstly, both franchises have significant stepmother-stepdaughter drama. Hellraiser protagonist Kirsty Cotton and her stepmother Julia clearly don't get along at the beginning of the first film and once supernatural forces get involved, it escalates into outright violence. In the second film, once Julia has been thoroughly corrupted, she explicitly refers to herself as the wicked stepmother and the evil queen and mocks Kirsty as "Snow White." Meanwhile, protagonist Sarah Williams is openly disrespectful toward her stepmother Irene in Labyrinth, and Irene clearly does not know what to do with her. Knowing her stepdaughter's interest in fantasy, Irene complains that Sarah treats her as a "wicked stepmother."

Furthermore, at the beginning of the film when we first meet here, I get serious Julia vibes off Irene. They're both dressed formally (albeit for different reasons--Irene and Sarah's father are going on a date and Julia just seems like an ice-queen in general) and their hairstyles are somewhat alike. Although there's more open hostility between the two than between Kirsty Cotton and her stepmother Julia in the first Hellraiser, Sarah is several years younger than Kirsty and significantly less mature. Perhaps Julia and Kirsty were similarly hostile when Kirsty was a young teen, although if that were the case I doubt Kirsty's father Larry would have been so foolish as to assume a now-adult Kirsty would want to live with them in their new town or later ask her to help him figure out why Julia is acting so strangely.

Later, when Sarah becomes frustrated by baby Toby's crying, she wishes the Goblin King would take him "far away from me." The crying abruptly stops and when Sarah goes to investigate, we see goblins in the walls, moving under mattresses, etc. That gave me major Hellraiser vibes, especially given how Kirsty's sinister uncle Frank Cotton's personal hell in the second film involved sensual women under sheets (who disappeared when he removed them), how doorways to Hell formed in the walls, etc. You can see some of that in the clips below.

Also, Kirsty in the first Hellraiser solved the puzzle box and summoned the Cenobites completely ignorant of what the box actually did. She was curious about this device that her undead uncle was so protective of, started fiddling with it, and then this happened. 

Like Kirsty, Sarah had no idea that her frustrated wish to be rid of her baby half-brother would actually summon a supernatural being. And although Jareth and his goblin cronies are significantly less rough than Pinhead and his crew are, there are definitely similarities. Here are two YouTube clips depicting Sarah summoning him and his arrival:

The Goblin King is nowhere near as dangerous as Pinhead--the latter is a Dracula-like sadist who attempts to welch on his bargains, while Jareth is more whimsical and kid-friendly--but both are dangerous and sexual creatures with an unhealthy interest in the young, brunette female protagonist.

Oh, and there's that. Pinhead describes himself as his crew as "explorers of the furthest reaches of experience, demons to some and angels to others" and they subjected Frank to "pain and pleasure indivisible" when he was under their control. The almighty TVTropes describes the Cenobites as "the priests of an S&M religion." In the climax of Hellraiser, Pinhead attempts to abduct Kirsty, telling her that, "We have such sights to show you," while the in second film, he confidently allows Kirsty to freely wander his realm, informing her that, "We have eternity to know your flesh." 

The sexuality in Labyrinth is a bit more subtle given how this is a children's movie, but Jareth's infamous bulging crotch has been discussed at length online, we see David Bowie as Sarah's mother's new boyfriend in a newspaper (a romantic rivalry with one's own mother?), and Jareth gets very testy at the notion of Sarah kissing Hoggle, a dwarfish creature whom she befriends in the Labyrinth. This culminates in Sarah essentially getting roofied and dancing with Jareth at a ball, a scene that is downright rapey. And Jareth later straight-up propositions Sarah, telling her, "I ask for so little. Just let me rule you, and you can have everything that you want. Just fear me, love me. Do as I say and I will be your slave."

Finally, both franchises have elaborate mazes. Sarah must solve the titular Labyrinth in thirteen hours to rescue her brother from Jareth, while Kirsty briefly ventures into the Cenobites' realm when she solves the box in the first Hellraiser film. The second film features a more extensive exploration of the Cenobites' maze-like realm.

So although rarely does one associate a children's fantasy film (albeit one with some significant adult subtext) like Labyrinth with the sexual horror of Hellraiser, there are an interesting number of similarities.

Reflections on STRIKE TEAM ALPHA, 30-Odd Years Later

Staying over at my grandparents' house when I was a child in the early 1990s, I found my uncle's trove of 1970s and 1980s geekdom. We're talking Doctor Who novels (I specifically remember Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion), Dragon magazine, etc. And in particular a lot of tabletop war games, including Strike Team Alpha from 1978. That one was my personal favorite, largely because they had a dinosaur-like antagonist race called the T'Rana. Uncle John eventually let me take it home, but I misplaced it somewhere in my parents' house.

Well, after years of sporadically looking for a new copy (including finding and calling up the original creator, who sent me some pictures of game-manual artwork), I found one on eBay and ordered it (as part of a two-pack with Full Thrust, a British space-fleet tabletop game that's still in production today). Although I don't really like playing tabletop wargames, I do really enjoy the lore and I do remember liking Strike Team Alpha's storyline.

So on this merry Thanksgiving, I got the manual out of the plastic sleeve they sent it in and re-read it for the first time in close to 30 years. How did it hold up? Well here goes...

*The backstory predates Warhammer 40,000's "every faction is evil" darkness by nine years. Earth demands a 95% tax rate from asteroid colonists due to the massive self-importance of the people, or at least their leadership ("Earth being the self-acknowledged center of the Universe decided that its asteroid colonies were not paying the proper respect to the birthplace of humanity"). Colonies that cannot or will not pay are wiped out, prompting the surviving colonists to convert their habitats into generation ships and bug out for another solar system. Earth's population, rather than realizing their own greed and tyranny provoked this and failing to acknowledge the sheer courage this took, call this "the Exodus of Cowards." And when the belters foolishly reveal where they've set up their new homes, the result is the founding of a united Earth government that launches an incredibly destructive war of conquest. Like seriously, three-quarters of the colonists on Tau Ceti are killed in the opening nuclear attack and the subsequent "War of Reclamation" is specifically described in the manual as "a war of terror." One gaming scenario involves miners being used for forced labor rebelling and offering the metals they'd mined to mercenaries to help them re-establish self-government. And that's before the wars with the cat-like Sha'anthra (who wage wars almost for fun with other species or with each other) and the T'Rana (who are genocidal Explosive Breeders) kick off. And the outlying colonists, though they're clearly higher on the moral food chain than the Terran Federation, will often fight each other.

(The more I think about it, the more this sounds like Joss Whedon's space Western Firefly and its film adaptation Serenity.)

*Per the above, although the back-story isn't preachy and annoying, you can tell the politics involved. Not only is the initial exodus from Sol driven by a greedy centralized government that taxes people literally to death, but the Terran colonial occupation regime explicitly forbids ownership of energy weapons by private citizens or even local governments. As a result, colonial militias are equipped with broadly late 20th or early 21st Century assault rifles, machine guns, etc. despite the presence of literally predatory alien races, human pirates, etc. And many of the scenarios the game-book provides include colonial rebels and their hired mercenaries fighting collaborators and the Terran Federation years afterward. Live free or die, indeed. The game came out not long before Ronald Reagan became the U.S. President and reflects some of the zeitgeist of that era.

*There's an apocryphal quote out there that says amateurs talk about tactics and dilettantes talk about strategy, but professionals talk about logistics. And the logistics make sense. The game emphasizes small-unit combat because supporting a large army across interstellar space would be a nightmare. The frontier colonies are underdeveloped (likely intentionally, to keep them from rebelling) and the core industrial worlds are so far away. The supplies and gear for super-advanced weaponry used by the Terran Federation's Marines would have be carried across light-years. So campaigns would need to be short and sharp.

*Speaking as someone who is now vastly more knowledgeable about history than when he was eight, the war with the T'Rana looks a lot like WWII, particularly the last madness of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. We're talking an overly-aggressive enemy that fights to the death, literally eats their enemies, picks unnecessary fights that ultimately doom them, will destroy conquered territory rather than allow it to be liberated, etc. The end of the war looks like what would have happened if the U.S. had rejected both the atomic bomb and invading the Home Islands and decided to continue the conventional bombing/blockade...something that wouldn't work against something as large and self-sufficient as an entire star system. The T'Rana are (mostly) contained, but there are still raids.

*The game features tactical nuclear weapons, not just small nukes delivered by missile or aircraft that one might expect, but nuclear weapons deployed by individual soldiers. We're not just talking something like the infantry-operated Davy Crockett recoilless rifle that seems like something that would actually be useable (albeit unbelievably risky to due the fact a single infantryman or combat team could start a nuclear war), but nuclear hand grenades. The game was clearly devised in a time before precision-guided weapons that would allow more-accurate conventional weapons to be used in place of battlefield nukes. There are also fusion-beam weapons called "sunguns" that are sort of like flamethrowers, except one needs to wear anti-radiation protective gear.

*However, the game does feature something called a "battlerob," which is essentially a semiautonomous robotic light tank. Groups like Amnesty International have already spoken out against "killer robots," so this is something that's going to be a political issue in the future.

*The game also features rocket-propelled explosive ammunition, much like Warhammer 40,000's bolters.

*One of the play-testers was George Alec Effinger, a noted science fiction writer and winner of both Hugo and Nebula Awards.

*There are quite a number of typos in the manual.

Verdict: Still a fun world to blow things up in (and it was interesting that many concepts were used in later, more successful games), but finding a copy (and especially finding the Ral Partha figures designed for the game) is going to be a real pain. It'd be nice if there was licensed fiction set in this world (that's one reason I reached out to the original creator), but that seems a bit...unlikely at this point.

More Alternate History: The Latin Empire of Constantinople Thrives? The Yamato Goes Out Like A Boss?

Two more interesting alternate-history scenarios from the Internet's premiere forum. Just because I had myself banned from there six years ago (except for a brief drop-in back in mid-2017 to plug The Thing In The Woods) doesn't mean I can't read the public forums and funnel people to some worthy stories.

Yet Another Roman Empire: The Latin Empire of Constantinople-During the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the vindictive duke of Venice redirected the crusading army to Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. After various intrigues they ended up seizing control of the city, sacking it, and creating a Catholic empire controlling the city and its environs while Greek lords or Turkish invaders grabbed the rest. Although the "Latin Empire of Constantinople" was terminated after a century or so, many historians believe this was the point of no return for the Empire even though it didn't fall until 1453.

But what if the Catholic rulers of the "Latin Empire" had more outside support and were more competent? There are many historical cases of an empire ruled by a foreign conquest dynasty thriving, with Qing China being a major example. In this scenario, the intervention of France and Holy Roman Empire allow the Latin Empire to wipe out one of its major competitors early on, giving them a stronger territorial base and greater independence from the Italian merchant princes. The Latin Empire's ruling family also seeks to intermarry with the leaders of the various breakaway regions like Trebizond, playing the game of thrones in Anatolia.

How does it work out for them? You'll have to read the timeline to find out. :)

The Final Japanese Mass Naval Sortie: Operation Ten-Go-During the historical battle of Okinawa, the Japanese launched Operation Ten-Go, in which they dispatched the enormous battleship Yamato and much of their remaining surface fleet. The idea was that the ships would fight their way to Okinawa, beach themselves, and support the defenders with their massive guns until they were destroyed. In real life, the fleet was intercepted and utterly destroyed by air attack in one of history's great anti-climaxes. Here's a computer recreation of the Yamato's obliteration (complete with what might be gun-camera footage from the planes involved), complete with the absolutely ridiculous numbers of carrier-based aircraft that were brought to bear on the world's biggest battleship and its escorts.

 

However, in this scenario, the Japanese fleet is able to get more fuel from Singapore to Japan itself and dispatch more ships on the mission. This allows the Japanese fleet to weather the carrier attacks that in real history destroyed it and have one last surface engagement with the American battle line.

How does it go? Read to find out.

West African Socialist Federation? President H.P. Lovecraft? More Fun Alternate Timelines

The good old alternate history forum serves as another place where I can find content to blog about, even though I'm no longer a member. Here are a couple interesting ones I found over the last couple weeks.

African Yugoslavia: A West African Story-In this one, a mutiny by French African soldiers who haven't been paid for their World War II service kicks off a war of national independence in what's now Mali beginning in 1944. The French's heavy-handed response (in real life this resulted in a massacre) turns more and more of their African subjects--and in particular their African soldiers--against the government. Various rebel groups unite under a clique of intellectuals advocating "African socialism" who in real life became the leaders of independent Senegal, Mali, etc. Faced with a prolonged war in the interior of French West Africa when they've been bled white by World War II and fighting against rebels in Southeast Asia as well, the French ultimately cut their losses and concede independence. What results is an authoritarian left-leaning African federation that refuses to cooperate with the Soviet Union--as the title suggests, basically Yugoslavia in Africa. The author appears to be from West Africa himself and has very detailed knowledge of the history, cultures, and personalities involved, so it's a pretty interesting read.

The King In Yellow: The Presidency of H.P. Lovecraft-In real life, author H.P. Lovecraft was a socially-inept recluse and starving artist, but this is one of many things that change as a result of the dying Dowager Empress failing to poison her imprisoned reformist nephew, the legitimate Qing Emperor. He regains the throne and purges Manchu reactionaries, provoking a three-sided Chinese civil war and ultimately the partition of China. Ripples from these changes include a healthier and more prosperous family life for the young Lovecraft, who serves in this timeline's version of World War I, begins publishing his own political magazine, and ultimately runs for office. 

Although it would be easy to portray Lovecraft as essentially an American Hitler (after all, they were both starving artists in their younger days and extremely, extremely racist), Lovecraft's real-life views were a lot more complex, especially as he grew older. What happens is interesting--he governs as functionally a New Dealer, with a secret society/government agency whose member use his real-life fictional creations as titles (in deliberate mockery of the Ku Klux Klan) that serves as his muscle. There are a lot of in-jokes pertaining to Lovecraft's real-life fictional writing, although in this timeline that exists only as poetry books he writes to deal with wartime PTSD. The wider geopolitical situation is complex...in addition to a divided China, Mussolini stays a socialist and becomes dictator of Italy after WWI as part of a wider Communist bloc that includes the Soviet Union and a Communist Germany where historical Communist leader Rosa Luxembourg (who tried to overthrow the nascent Weimar Republic and ended up getting shot and thrown into a river) is ultimately succeeded by none other than real-life Nazi Joseph Goebbels. This is less bizarre than it sounds--earlier in his Nazi career, Goebbels was part of a more left-wing faction (which emphasized the "socialist" part of National Socialist) before throwing in with Hitler and his more right-wing clique that was supported by the military and the industrialists.

Oh, and Nikola Tesla is heavily involved in this world's Manhattan Project. :)

Chamberlain Grows a Spine and a German-Soviet Truce: Two WWII Alternate Timelines

The premiere alternate history forum on the Internet once again doesn't disappoint, with two interesting new timelines for your entertainment. Both are set during World War II, one beginning before the war actually starts and the other in 1942 or so. Here goes...

Defying The Storm-The mighty CalBear, the gear-head who wrote a post on this blog about the failure of the Iraqi Army against ISIS and a book-length alternate history on how the Nazis taking Stalingrad could have extended the war into the 1950s, came up with a somewhat more subtle scenario. The divergence is that Dr. Morrell, Hitler's doctor who was feeding him all sorts of drugs, is killed by Allied bombing and Hitler's new doctor discovers just what his predecessor was doing. Hitler is weaned off the various drugs and is much more clear-headed and not so nuts. Meanwhile, Stalin develops a kidney infection, ignores his doctors' advice, and dies just as the Soviets win the Battle of Kursk. As a result, the vague talks of a separate peace in 1943 that didn't go anywhere result in a compromise peace. Germany keeps the Baltics and parts of Ukraine and returns some territory to the Soviets, who in turn resume their pre-war trade with Germany. There's also some puppy-kicking by both sides--the Germans agree to return all Soviet prisoners of war, with those who fought for the German army specifically identified, while the Soviets in turn deporting all Soviet Jews into German-occupied Poland (!!).

(Just in case we forgot just how malignant the totalitarians were. CalBear's book depicts what the Nazis wanted to do to the Russians if they won, which would have been vastly worse.)

Now Germany is able to rely once more on Soviet oil and grain and can move its forces into Italy to contest the Allied advance and into France to deter a large-scale invasion. But the United States is about to unleash the atomic bomb and neither the Germans nor the Soviets think this peace will last. Things are about to get very interesting. This whole scenario was inspired by this depiction of a naval battle between the 1945-level U.S. Navy and what the Germans could have had if they'd won--or at least not lost--the war in the East, so we might be seeing that scenario at some point.

(EDIT: Owing to some forum drama about whether the USSR would have made such a peace treaty, the thread may have been moved to a members-only section. If you click on the link above and you go to a log-in screen, that might be what happened.)

Munich Shuffle: 1938-1942-This one diverges from our history during the Sudetenland Crisis. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is injured in a plane crash upon returning from a diplomatic visit to Germany. This delays the Munich Conference until after the Nazis' infamous Kristallnacht, which disabuses Chamberlain's notions that Hitler could be reasoned with. Although Czechoslovakia cannot be saved, British rearmament starts earlier than in real history and this has consequences, most obviously when the Germans attack Norway. The Germans also don't get Czechoslovak assets in British banks, something that will likely have some negative economic consequences for them.

(The book Wages of Destruction describes just how much of the early Nazi economy was smoke-and-mirrors nonsense kept going by loot from their earliest conquests, like the Austrian and Czechoslovak gold reserves.)

So if you're interested in World War II and in particular things that could have gone differently, these are both worth a read.

Movie Review: THE BLOB (1988)

Once upon a time in elementary school, I was a regular reader of the Crestwood Monsters series, a series of children's books in which the tales of the classical movie monsters (Dracula, the Wolfman, etc.) were retold using black-and-white film stills as illustrations. One such book was centered around the 1950s horror film The Blob. I was aware there was a remake in the 1980s, but never got around to seeing it until Myopia Movies did an episode on it. I wasn't able to participate, but I saw it later when the episode came out.

The Plot

In a ski town in what's probably Colorado, a meteor lands, bringing with it a very hungry life-form that gets bigger the more it eats. A bunch of small-town types like earnest high school football player Paul (Donovan Leitch), cheerleader Meg (Shawnee Smith, who later went on to play Amanda in the Saw films), and biker delinquent Brian (Kevin Dillon) now have much bigger problems than who's going out with whom and who needs tools to work on their motorcycle.

The Good

*In a lot of horror movies, the characters make bad decisions in order to move the plot along. In this film, most of the characters make good decisions and the bad decisions make sense in context (i.e. Brian storms off because he has a big chip on his shoulder and feels disrespected). This makes the titular Blob especially dangerous--in order to deal with people who are mostly not complete fools, it has to be pretty cunning itself.

*Some characters who could be clichés have surprising depths and twists.

*The movie seriously goes for Anyone Can Die. Not going to go into detail for reasons of spoilers, but they definitely avoid the horror-movie problem of the audience pretty much knowing who's going to die from early in the film.

*They use late 1980s practical effects and minimal if any CGI. It looks good. And definitely gross--they were going for ghastly here and it works.

*There are some laugh-out-loud moments, such as one of the football players figuring out who his date's father is.

The Bad

*There's a prolonged opening featuring shots of the town and then we cut to the high-school football game. There are two actual meet-cutes. There's no hint we're dealing with a threat from beyond until at least fifteen minutes in. Some of the stuff is necessary because it introduces the characters but it could stand to be tightened up, like the shots of the empty streets. If that was intended as some kind of fake-out to make the audience think the Blob had already eaten the town, it didn't work.

*There's a subplot involving the town's Catholic priest (at least I think he's supposed to be Catholic based on how he's dressed) that doesn't make a lot of sense and eats up too much screen time. Not going to go into detail for possible spoiler reasons, but his Biblical interpretations and later actions sound more like an End Times enthusiast Protestant, not a Catholic.

The Verdict

Well-made and definitely worth a watch. 8.5 out of 10.

Movie Review: DUNE (2021)

Thanks to an online group I'm in, I managed to get into an early screening of the 2021 adaptation of Frank Herbert's science fiction classic Dune. I'd seen the 1980s film (and even participated in a podcast about it) and the early 2000s miniseries on the Sci-Fi Channel, so I was definitely looking forward to it getting the Lord of the Rings treatment.

(Seriously, owing to COVID concerns I said I'd see the movie in a spacesuit if I needed to.)

So how was it when I finally got to see it nearly a year after the original release date? Here we go...

The Plot

In a space empire thousands of years in the future, the noble House Atreides headed by Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) is granted the planet Arrakis as a fief by the Emperor Shaddam IV, taking it away from rival House Harkonnen headed by the nefarious Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård). Arrakis is the sole source of the spice melange, which makes interstellar travel possible, and it is extraordinarily valuable. However, it's a trap--the jealous emperor seeks to destroy Duke Leto, whom he views as a rival.

Into this comes Leto's son Paul (Timothée Chalamet) by his Bene Gesserit (a sort of order of space witches) concubine Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson). Trained by his mother in Bene Gesserit techniques like the commanding Voice, he's been having visions of the future, including the young woman Chani (Zendaya), a warrior from Arrakis's native Fremen people. 

When the emperor's nefarious plot goes into motion, will he be able to draw on the "desert power" envisioned by his father?

The Good

*The cinematography of this movie is quite simply awesome. It is absolutely a magnificently beautiful film, and I cannot say this enough. Caladan, the Atreides homeworld, is a beautiful place of magnificent coasts and oceans, while the Harkonnens rule over a polluted urban hellscape. Salusa Secundus, where the emperor draws his elite Sardaukar armies, is the unholy admixture of the two. They manage to make the Sardaukar disturbing, and that's good.

*One of the great flaws of the 1984 adaptation was how clumsily it handled the exposition needed for this gigantic science fiction universe, and that's not the case here. The filmmakers manage to convey so much with shots or small sequences. For example, rather than explaining the whole back-story about how too-advanced computers are illegal and how specially-trained humans known as Mentats have replaced them, we just see Atreides Mentat Thufir Hawat (Stephen McKinley Henderson) do this peculiar thing with his eyes a couple times, the same with the Harkonnen Mentat Piter de Vries (David Dastmalchian). That the Atreides are benign to their subjects and the Harkonnens harsh and cruel is also show rather than told--Duke Leto is free and easy with visitors on his island paradise and on Arrakis, while people cringe before the Baron and his beastly nephew Glossu "Beast" Rabban (Dave Bautista). And the issues between Jessica and the rest of the Bene Gesserit are handled in glances and a short conversation rather than blah-blah-blah.

*There are some subtle touches of characterization as well, like how in a father-son talk Leto tells Paul that he didn't want to be duke he wanted to be a pilot...and his own father was cool with this, knowing how this would ultimately bring him around to his responsibilities "another way." That skill with piloting comes in handy for several sequences in the film, for both the father and the son. And Leto's father was killed fighting bulls for the entertainment of his subjects--the displayed head of said bull keeps popping up in ominous ways I thought were clever.

*I saw this in IMAX and that's definitely where to see it. Not only will you get the full scope of the visuals, but you'll also get the full force of the soundtrack. Ye gods, the soundtrack. It will crush the life out of you, in a good way.

*The acting of the main characters is impressive. Chalamet does a good job of portraying the teen Paul, portraying his rebelliousness, emotional sensitivity, and giftedness, as well as the steel within that will propel him to his destiny. Isaac is appropriately noble as Duke Leto, while Ferguson is well-cast as Jessica. And although I was skeptical of gender-flipping the Imperial scientist Liet Kynes (the filmmakers came up with this ridiculous reasoning about how women are naturally peacemakers between cultures), I liked Sharon Duncan-Brewster's portrayal, especially later in the film. Josh Brolin does a good job conveying the intensity of Atreides weapons-master and musician Gurney Halleck, while Jason Momoa definitely impresses as the jocular warrior Duncan Idaho.

*The battle sequences are also quite impressive. In the Dune world, personal shielding has reduced firearms to a secondary role at best and much fighting is done with swords. The way the battles take this into account and the way the fight scenes are choreographed is pretty cool.

The Bad 

*Even though they're adapting only the first part of the book, the movie is still very, very long at just over two and a half hours. It starts to drag a couple hours in. That was the single biggest flaw, and kind of a substantial one.

*And even though this is the first half of the book, they still have to leave stuff out. One character who has a lot of internal turmoil is reduced to a non-entity despite their major role in events, as is another character whose actions tie in. Vague to avoid spoilers. :) And I'm wondering if they're consolidating the Harkonnen nephews--we meet Rabban but not Feyd-Rautha, the smarter and more dangerous of the two. Feyd-Rautha isn't to my recollection even mentioned.

*Some of the characters' speech comes off as a bit too present-day for thousands of years in the future.

The Verdict

8.0 out of 10. See it. Go see it. Help it make enough money that we can see the rest of the story on-screen to this degree of glory. Given how the second third to half of the story focuses on the war against the Harkonnens and the Empire, it will almost certainly avoid this film's problem of being too slow-moving.

Movie Review: HOWARD THE DUCK (1986)

Once upon a time as a child, I wanted to work in movie special effects and at some point read about the special effects for Howard the Duck. I definitely remember a picture of one of the evil aliens, although I don't recall how exactly it was made. Although I have listened to a podcast about the film (possibly the How Did This Get Made episode), I never actually got around to seeing it.

Well, thanks to Myopia Movies, I finally did. Here's the episode. And now for the review...

The Plot

Howard (Ed Gale in the suit, Chip Zien as the voice) is an anthropomorphic duck hailing from Duckworld, a planet where creatures like him are the dominant species rather than humans. After a long day at work, Howard comes home to smoke cigars, watch TV, and read Playduck (yes, really), only to be transported to Earth by scientific accident. He soon rescues small-time rocker Beverly Switzler (Lea Thompson) from punks and she introduces him to her annoying scientist friend Phil Blumburtt (Tim Robbins), who tries to figure out what Howard is and where he came from. Howard tries to make his way in this strange new world, including getting a job, but the experiment overseen by Dr. Walter Jennings (Jeffrey Jones) that brought Howard to Earth soon brings something else as well...

The Good

*The movie is really funny. Not only is there a lot of goofy and slapstick humor, but there're also some more thoughtful jokes, including a sequence where Howard attempts to find a job at the local unemployment office. I laughed out loud several times--I'm really glad I didn't get this movie off Amazon for the Kindle to watch at the gym. Might disturb the others.

(Even though Howard is now a Disney property, you can watch it for free on NBC's Peacock TV streaming service. For now.)

*Gene Siskel's negative review from when the film was released said that Howard wasn't a likeable character, but in-universe it does make sense. He's the only one of his species on Earth, he's a prey animal on top of that (apparently he arrived in Cleveland right before duck-hunting season), people treat him like a pet, a child, and in one memorable scene, a meal, and he's worried he'll never make it home. He's frustrated and lashes out at people, including those who are trying to help him. And that's on top of some of his personal drama from back in Duckworld--he wanted to be a musician but chose to enter medical school to please his parents, only to fail out. The opening also hints at romantic troubles as well.

*The acting is generally good. I particularly found Thompson amusing as Beverly and Robbins amusing, albeit less so, as Phil. Jones, meanwhile, spends much of the movie possessed by an evil alien. If that's really him speaking with the Evil Voice (Brian Steele is listed as the uncredited voice of "The Dark Overlords of The Universe" so it's possible they dubbed him in), props to him for his vocals.

*I did like the soundtrack as well. Also, Thompson did sing as well as act, which is another point to her.

The Bad

*The movie could stand to be tightened up a bit. There's a chase scene that takes way too long even if it does provide some of the aforementioned laugh-out-loud moments.

*Was this movie marketed toward kids or adults? If it was marketed toward kids, no wonder it bombed at the box office. This movie is not for children, at all. That's not a bad thing (nobody thinks Saving Private Ryan is intended for children), but it is something to keep in mind.

*Per my above comment, although Howard being cranky and obnoxious makes sense for the character, he is kind of a jackass early on.

*Although you do eventually get used to it, upon first seeing Howard he's rather off-putting. I wouldn't go so far as to call it Uncanny Valley, but he does look quite weird. Per Wikipedia the original plan was to make him computer-animated but the technology at the time wasn't up to it. Hopefully if they ever remake it, we're looking at something more akin to Avatar.

*There's this elaborate voice-over that starts the film that claims what's real in one world is fantasy in another. So basically Howard is real on his planet, but he's a comic-book character in ours. That's kind of lame. It's also never followed up on--what if Howard were accosted by a crazed fan who knows he's not a man in a costume? You could get really meta.

*Some of the duck puns are really bad--not funny-bad, but just stupid. And if I think a pun isn't funny, you know it's bad.

*The villainous aliens from the climax have not aged well in terms of effects quality.

The Verdict

Worth seeing at least once. I might actually buy it. 8.0 out of 10. Generally speaking remakes should be reserved for good concepts that were executed poorly (or at least not as well as they could have been), so Disney should definitely come up with an MCU version. Thompson has already volunteered to direct, so maybe they should give her a shot. Like the article suggested, her daughter Zoey Deutch could play Beverly in this version too. That'd be hilarious, since they have worked together before and especially considering Thompson said her daughters refused to finish the movie after a...romantic interlude...involving their mother and an alien duck.