What would zombies do?

In a heat wave situation like Maine's got going on right now? I mean, multiple days in the high 80s degrees at 90% humidity has to play hell on the ol' putrefaction, no? I suppose that's one unintended benefit of global warming: when the inevitable zombie apocalypse arrives, they'll all rot to ineffectual bits and pieces that much faster because it's so dang hot out.

Speaking of zombie bits and pieces, have you heard about these?

Never Slow Dance with a Zombie - a YA book by E. Van Lowe. I haven't read it yet nor really know anything about it, but I've seen some good reviews and really, do you need to know more than what the title tells you with this one? No, you don't. Go read it and tell me what you think.

There's a new bar in Minneapolis: Donny Dirk's Zombie Den. The bartenders dress like Shaun from Shaun of the Dead, complete with white shirt, red tie and bloodstains. It's apparently in a kind of rough neighborhood but I'm seeing positive reviews pop up on the interwebs.

Zombie Girl: the Movie is streaming for free on Hulu and SnagFilms, for the next couple of days or so anyway. This is a documentary about this twelve year old girl who is making a feature length, gory, shuffling zombie movie called Pathogen. I have got to get on seeing this - and so should you!

(Thanks to Pop Candy for the last two links, btw.)

And finally, I found this site which is really an amazing clearinghouse for all things zombie: The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse, of course.

Dollhouse episode review: "Epitaph One"

Will someone please explain to me why FOX decided not to air this fantastic episode - which surpassed even the last two episodes of the season in tightly-written, well-acted excellence? Just as Joss intended, "Epitaph One" would have been a great series finale if Dollhouse hadn't been picked up again; conversely, it's an outstanding set-up for the upcoming S2.

It's a classic science fiction piece, post-apocalyptic, set in 2019 and flashing back to 2009 and the years between. The flashbacks tell, in tantalizing fragments, the story of the Worst Possible Scenario for the evolution of the Dollhouse's imprinting technology. This episode gave a huge amount of backstory that had been glossed over during the regular season, while at the same time moving the universe forward. Everything in "Epitaph One" is connected to something else. There is nothing in it that doesn't mean something.

The acting was a cut above the regular season too, largely due to the fact that Eliza Dushku was scarcely onscreen at all for "Epitaph One." Amy Acker and Felicia Day rock the hell out of their roles (although FD is given the worst dialogue), and the newcomers more than hold their own. Little Adair Tishler (formerly known as "Molly the Hero-finder" from Heroes) is just incredible. I expect great things for her career.

I read that "Epitaph One" has been iTunes's #1 download, which is possibly what FOX's marketing department was going for; I myself watched it on DVD. Hopefully the rave reviews and #1 spot will encourage FOX to keep supporting this show - which I really believe is only going to get better and better as it goes - I just wish they'd aired it as well so the widest possible audience could have gotten a glimpse.

Mini movie review: Doomsday

It's been quite some time since I saw a movie as - what's the word I want: disjointed? hodgepodge? higgledepiggledy? - as Doomsday. Take 28 Days Later (what with the infection decimating Great Britain), The Road Warrior and Max Max Beyond Thunderdome (for the post-apocalyptic, crazed car chases and general stirring up of the post-apocalyptic populace, complete with an 80s soundtrack - which I guess is there to show how nuts this populace is), and Aliens (for the badass chick heroine and the military, smug in their high-tech weaponry and vehicles getting their asses handed to them), plus a little of Serenity (for the Reavers) and some Monty Python's Holy Grail (for knights and the exploding rabbit) ... that's Doomsday.

I'm absolutely not going to try to describe the plot. It's a find the cure for the disease that's killing everyone disaster thing and there's lots of explosions and blood and gore splashing everywhere, including on the camera (which was a nice touch the first time, but kind of goofy the second time). The soundtrack kicks ass as much as Rhona Mitra (the aforementioned badass chick heroine) but this movie is just one hot mess. I really wish Neil Marshall had picked one or two genres to focus on, rather than whirling it all together; The Descent was sooooooooo good, and this movie just felt like he couldn't say no to any idea that he had. Still, for a hot day when you're looking for something brainless and noisy, you could do worse. (But I'd check to see if The Descent was available first.)

Not all books, all the time

Lest you think that I've gone all brainy on you and have been doing nothing but reading Great Works of Litracha all summer, let me tell you what all I've been watching on the vidiot box:

Glad I saw it because it's a classic, Part I: Point Break - With all the positive buzz Kathryn Bigelow has been getting on her latest film, The Hurt Locker, I thought I should take a gander at some of her earlier works and when Point Break popped up on the cable, I gandered away. Yes, it's a dumb action movie - whose legendary stunts (talking while skydiving; catching up to someone while skydiving) have been tested out on Mythbusters - but it has these points in its favor: Swayze in all his golden glory, roundhouse-kicking bad guys while wearing a wetsuit; beautifully shot action sequences (although with perhaps too much emphasis on the slo-mo effect); and Keanu Reeves actually emoting!!!

Mostly glad I saw it because it's a classic, Part II: The Brood - The horror film that put David Cronenburg on the map in 1979 left me a little cold. It's slow, for one, with lots of talking and approximately one kill per half hour. The kills aren't particularly scary or shocking or gory either, although the climatic reveal of Nola birthing a Brood baby from an external egg sac, and then licking said newborn clean, definitely ups the ick/ewww factor and sets the stage for the director's subsequent body-horror films.

In the total waste of time category: Hellbound: Hellraiser II - Speaking of slow ... I recorded this one on the DVR and then ended up fast-forwarding through 90% of it. This sequel does not maintain the shock value of the very gory first film, and squanders what goodwill it has by stealing scenes from its predecessor. The Cenobites are used to even lesser effect as well: hardly ever on screen and then when they are, being ineffectual and not scary.

Not even close to a waste of time: 21 Jump Street - is on Hulu. Did you know this? I didn't know this - I just found out. The hair, the clothes, the music (terrible Richard Marx-ish stuff, not cool New Wave), Johnny Depp c. 1987 ... this is the cure for what ails me. I've only gotten through the first five episodes but gawd, they make me soooooo happy!!!!

Book review: The Secret History by Donna Tartt

This is the last of my vacation book reviews. Technically there's one more - The Island of Dr. Moreau - but I'm holding that to be part of my next Read It, Watch It, Watch It Again features ... if Blockbuster Online would just ever send me the first movie.

I did a really good job of selecting vacation books this year – not one of the ten I finished was a dog. (Can’t speak to the doggishness of the two I didn’t get to: The Nice and the Good by Iris Murdoch, and Neal Stephensons’ Anathem … except that I found both to be rather inprenetrable, but perhaps worth another try sometime.) But the final vacation novel, Donna Tartt’s lengthy (559 pages) The Secret History was just outstanding. Even though you learn who gets killed – and who kills him – on the very first page, this exciting book keeps you turning pages until the very end, learning the “why,” the “how” and the “then what?”.

Set on the fictitious Hampden College campus (a thinly veiled Bennington, the author’s alma mater), The Secret History is narrated by Richard Papen, a poor and lonely student from California. In his first days at college, he decides that he wants to be part of the small, elite Classics department, taught by only one professor, populated by only five other students. Richard gains entry to the class and, eventually, to the camaraderie of the other students: brilliant, brusque, wealthy Henry, the ostensible leader; big-hearted and sophisticated Francis; the beautiful twins, Camilla and Charles, elegant and wary; and big, goofy Bunny (“don’t call me ‘Edmund’”) Corcoran.

At first Richard is in heaven, loving his classes and spending all his time with his fine new friends, drinking, smoking, eating extravagantly, enjoying weekends at Francis’s aunt’s country house. Things get weird when Henry, Francis and the twins re-enact an ancient Greek rite with terrible consequences. The situation goes from bad to worse when Bunny, insanely jealous that he wasn’t included, blackmails them, threatening to tell their secret. Henry decides that Bunny must be silenced; the four others enlist Richard to help; and one hiking trip later, the threat has been eliminated.

But the book isn’t even half over at this point! And Tartt painstakingly follows the survivors’ unraveling as they try to come to terms with what they’ve done. Each character is fascinating, in turn attractive, repellent, pathetic and scary. Even at such a great length, nothing seems extraneous in this book. I wanted to know everything about these people and, once I did, could not turn my horrified eyes away.

Telling the audience whodunit right at the start is an ancient mode of storytelling, as Tartt herself explains in the included author interview at the end of the book (which I rather wish I hadn’t read: she comes off as a completely pretentious bitch, which I only find redeemable by the strength of her prose. But still.) But just because the reader knows the action that’s about to happen, they still have to guess at the events leading up to it, and the motivations for it, and the fall-out from it. In Tartt’s extremely capable hands, knowing who killed Bunny Corcoran doesn’t at all diminish the excitement and enjoyment of the story unfolding page by page.

Book reviews: A Great Deliverance and Payment In Blood by Elizabeth George

I can’t believe it took me seven books into vacation to reach the first British murder mystery (hereinafter sometimes referred to as “BMMs”); I love BMMs and once spent a whole vacation reading nothing but – PD James, Dorothy Sayers … now, thanks to the excellent suggestion of Nancy B. and Megan (B)K., I can add the Thomas Lynley novels by Elizabeth George to the roster.

A Great Deliverance and Payment In Blood are the first two books in the series (many of which have been adapted into films by the BBC). The investigatory team is Inspector Thomas Lynley, Eighth Earl of Something-or-Other and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers. In the best BMM tradition, these two are terribly mismatched and at odds with each other immediately – Lynley an aristocratic, handsome, urbane rake, Havers a short and squat working class oaf. But neither is exactly as they seem. Lynley holds pain and compassion within his gilded breast; Havers has a very sharp mind and good instincts beneath her bad temper and manners. Plus, Lynley is the sergeant’s last chance to advance in New Scotland Yard: if she can’t figure out how to work with him, she’s doomed to being a beat cop forever since she’s already alienated every other available inspector.

In A Great Deliverance, Lynley and Havers’s first case together takes them out of London and into the tiny, lovely village of Keldale, in Yorkshire. There, a wealty farmer has been found decapitated in his barn, his elderly border collie killed as well, and his fat, unattractive daughter sitting next to him, saying “I did it. And I’m not sorry.” But the good people of Keldale refuse to believe that Roberta, a good, gentle, simple soul, could have killed her father. And so the hunt is afoot for Scotland Yard.

Payment In Blood has Lynley and Havers in Scotland at a hulking manor house, investigating the brutal murder of a playwright. The acting troupe also ensconced at the house is full of insufferable characters and suspicious pesonages. Havers, as usual, struggles with the preferential treatment given to the upper class, while Lynley is shocked to discover that the woman he loves is there, and there with another man. Right under their noses another murder is committed and both Lynley and Havers find the situation spiraling dangerously out of their control.

Elizabeth George has not broken any particularly new ground here. She stays true to form with the tropes of her police team and their country cases. But she does it all so very well: she has a lovely eye for detail, and draws her characters exceedingly well, giving even the minor ones depth and making it impossible not to care about the major players. George doesn’t shy away from the grimness of human behavior and instead has crafted two very strong BMMs – and good novels apart from their genre to boot. I look forward to investigating more cases with Lynley and Havers in the near future - and may have to look into their BBC live action adaptations.

Book review: Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

The first stories were Tiger’s stories and they were stories of hunting and rending and teeth and blood. The world was a hard place then, and it hurt. Then Anansi, the Spider, the trickster, came and fooled Tiger, stole the stories away from him. And the people learned that life was full of song and dance and laughter, and even if it was hard, there was joy in it too.

Returning to the world he explored in American Gods, Neil Gaiman’s 2005 Anansi Boys is full of song and joy and laughter, and is a very good story indeed. “Fat Charlie” Nancy grew up perpetually embarrassed by his laughing, practical joke-loving dad. When, after years of estrangement, his father dies, Fat Charlie goes to the funeral and discovers that (1) his father was actually a god and (2) he is not an only child. If you want to see your brother, says the old West Indian woman who was Fat Charlie’s childhood neighbor, tell a spider. One night not too long afterwards, after a bottle of wine, Fat Charlie mentions offhandedly to a garden spider that he’s rescued from his bathtub that his brother should stop by.

So his brother does. Handsome, charming, lucky and fully aware of the benefits of being a god’s son, Spider descends upon Fat Charlie’s humdrum life and wreaks ample havoc upon it: seducing Fat Charlie’s fiancée, discovering financial inconsistencies at work which makes Fat Charlie’s shady boss nervous, getting Fat Charlie arrested, starting a cascade of events that lead to murder, séances and a trip to the West Indies. Fat Charlie is alternately fascinated and appalled by his brother but must concede in the end that his life is perhaps better – or at least more exciting – for having Spider in it.

Gaiman has done it again with Anansi Boys, weaving ancient folklore and modern storytelling with the greatest of ease. This is a lighter-weight book than American Gods, both in heft of subject matter and physical size (in fact, my only complaint was that it ended too soon – where it should have, story-wise, but I could have read twice the allotted pages because Gaiman is just that good). Instead of taking on all the old religions that built the United States, Gaiman this time focuses on the charming and devious “Mr. Nancy,” and what happens when a god’s child doesn’t know his godhead.

Part British police caper, part West Indian voodoo, part Douglas Adams-esque insanity, part folktale, Anansi Boys is great fun, great storytelling and, at the very least, completely identifiable to anyone who has ever been embarrassed by or frustrated with a family member. If all stories now belong to Anansi, then there is no question in my mind that Neil Gaiman is absolutely one of his boys.

Mini movie review: The Host

There’s nothing like a creature-feature to while away a hot summer night: I recently watched The Host (2006, Korean with English subtitles) and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Set along the Han River in Seoul, the plot is very simple: an enormous monster comes out of the river and snatches up a little girl. The little girl’s distraught family – father, aunt, uncle and grandfather – try to rescue her. There’s a little more to it than that, of course. The government gets involved due to a reported virus carried by the monster (hence the movie's title); and the government itself is the one responsible for the creation of the beastie, having dumped a bunch toxic chemicals down the drain in the first place. The whole family, with the exception of the little girl, are complete nitwits, struggling against their own natures as much as against their external foes. The girl, on the other hand, is smart, brave and clever, managing not only to stay alive in the monster’s lair, but to help and protect a younger boy as well.

The monster itself is glorious, sort of a giant mutated polliwog with fangs. Largely CGI with some animatronics, it’s awfully good, lurching around on land but then gracefully swinging like a gibbon from the struts on the underside of the bridge, grunting, snarling, drooling, gobbling people down and then regurgitating them back up.

This flick does a nice job of balancing comedy with horror - for most of the movie, the family's attempts at rescue border on farce - although it’s not gory or scary enough to merit true horror film status. Fun stuff and worth a look for sure.

Book review: Deerskin by Robin McKinley

I’ve read one or two of Robin McKinley’s Young Adult books before; Deerskin is not like those books. Yes, the sure-footed story-telling is there, and the characters that leap off the page, and the magic and mystery. But Deerskin, while still a fantasy, is indeed a fairy tale for adults (as one of the book jacket quotes gushes) – it is, in part, nightmarish, unthinkable, the grimmest fairy tale imaginable.

All as she was growing up, the Princess Lissar was ignored, overshadowed by her beautiful, generous, overwhelming parents – the queen the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms and the king clever and brave and handsome enough to win her hand. When the queen died, the king went mad with grief for she was his life, and while she was living, they only had eyes for each other. The princess grew up quietly, unnoticed except by her beloved pet dog, a greyhound-esque hound named “Ash,” a gift from a neighboring kingdom’s prince as slight consolation and comfort at her mother’s death.

At the princess’s seventeenth birthday, she got a coming-out party, and the court was amazed to discover that this princess, who had been for so long completely eclipsed by her mother’s beauty, was actually the very image of her mother. The nightmare did not truly begin, however, until the king realized the same thing.

Lissar and her devoted dog fled the castle and the unspeakable horror (which McKinley does, in fact, speak of in awful, heart-rending detail) contained within it. Through strength of will, resilience of body and not a little magic, she and Ash embarked upon a journey that brought them wonder and danger, loyalty and betrayal, healing and home. The brutalized princess had lost her memory, repressing not just recent events but all prior history, and eventually found her way to a far off kingdom where she got work in the prince’s dog kennels. I know I’m being very vague with the plot, but this is an excellent story and it deserves to be read, not spoiled here.

McKinley makes a note at the beginning of the book which says:

There is a story by Charles Perrault called Donkeyskin which, because of its subject matter, is often not included in collections of Perrault’s fairy tales. Or, if it does appear, it does so in a bowdlerized state. The original Donkeyskin is where Deerskin began.

All the old, unDisneyfied fairy tales are violent, often horrifically so: two out of every three princes dying during impossible quests, evil stepsisters hacking off bits of their feet to squeeze into party shoes, princesses dancing all night until their feet bleed. Donkeyskin and Deerskin go much further than any of those. This modern fantasy novel is indeed a fairy tale, following the traditions and tropes, but it is brutal and disturbing, no less so because McKinley writes so well.

But it is also full of strength and love – and dogs. Lots of dogs, actually – McKinley is obviously a dog person. Lissar regains much of her strength in the royal kennel, surrounded by happy dogs and puppies. For every act of wrath there is one of rebirth. I read a lot of fantasy novels but rarely does one stay with me for very long after I’ve closed the cover. Robin McKinley’s striking Deerskin is one that has.

District 9

It's gonna be good.* I'm gonna see it.

*A "low budget" R-rated sci-fi film about sick and starving aliens who come to Earth and get shoved into a South African ghetto and exploited by the world's governments, said movie produced by Peter Jackson and under no pressure from Hollywood studios to pander to the masses? You're damn right it's gonna be good. Opens August 14.