Video killed the radio star

I don't care what anyone says the superior format is ANALOG TV and VCR.

It's my time to shine

My next post is gonna be pretty damn big so I may as well get this out of the way first.  I'm going to be reviewing Stephen King's The Shining and both of the movies but before I do that I just want to clear up some things here so my reviews won't be comparisons between the book and the films.  And I'm sure there's people out there that have seen the movies but have no interest in reading the book but still may be curious about the differences between the two.

There may have been some miscasting issues.  First I gotta say that every actor in this movie did a really good job and I suspect that's why they were cast in this movie.  Shelley Duvall's character is supposed to be a blonde.  Jack Nicolson's character is is supposed to have shaggy sandy colored hair.  Danny is just supposed to look like a typical white 5 year old kid which is exactly what is.  I'll get to this later in my review but they don't really interact with each other quite like they did in the book either.  From the get go the Jack Torrance seems to have nothing but indifference and disdain for his wife and child.  This couldn't be more far off from the Jack Torrance in the book who is seen laughing and having fun with his family and there's a lot of love between these three characters, particularly the Jack and Danny characters(Wendy Torrance often feels jealous of the bond they share) and feels a great deal of guilt and shame for breaking his son's arm.  There's even a rather tender love scene after Danny gets attack in room 217.  The Wendy Torrance in the movie takes a more submissive role towards her husband and this could not be farther from the Wendy Torrance in the novel.  In fact she has such a strong presence Jack often feels like he's being nagged.  She really isn't the weak willed subordinate character she is in the movie.

In the book Jack Torrance is writing a play, in the movie he's writing a book.

Instead of a hedge maze there are hedge animals.

When Dick Hallorann takes Danny aside to tell him about the shining he does it in his car.  His mother watches this and is afraid Hallorann is going to kidnap him.

In the book the room where the ghost strangles Danny is 217, in the movie it's 237.

Everybody is familiar with that scene where Wendy Torrence reads her husband's manuscript and all it says is "No work and all play make Jack a dull boy" over and over again.  This never happened in Stephen King's book.

That scene where Shelley Duvall brains Jack Nicholson over the head with a bat on the stairs took place in the hotel bar(while he was strangling her) and he was hit over the head with an empty wine bottle.  Danny was in the room with her as well.

Instead of using an axe to break down the doors Jack Torrance uses roque mallets which are supposedly bigger and sturdier than your standard croquet mallet.  It may sound silly but I think the reason for this is the axe just looks better on screen and is more scary than a big mallet.

Dick Hallorann survives the end of the book.

In the movie the hotel remains intact by the end.  In the book the hotel is completely destroyed when the boiler explodes.


In closing the movie mirrors a lot of the dialogue in the book but these two are separate entities.  To put it this way, think of two half siblings that look nothing alike but still have some things in common under the surface.

Who is Karl Edward Wagner?

  I don’t suppose many people reading this will know who Karl Edward Wagner is and I can’t say I blame you.  For some reason shortly after his death his works nearly went out of print.  Considering that I think it’s safe to say Karl Edward Wagner is horror and fantasy's best kept secret.

Trying to explain my love for an author whom most people have never heard of is difficult.  The best way I can think of is you’d have to had read Karl Edward Wagner somewhere before to even have an interest in these books.  You may pick up a Stephen King, or Clive Barker, or Dean Koontz novel or anthology having never read them before but Karl Edward Wagner is the kind of cult writer I think you’d have to be exposed to first to even have a passing interest in anything else he’s done.  Just to give you an idea of what I’m trying to express here this is a picture of all the anthologies I own that contain Wagner’s short stories.

Sadly Dark Forces lost it's cover a long time ago and the binding of Zombies is just about to fall apart.  Wagner stories printed in these books are:

Dark Forces - Where the Summer Ends

Mammoth Book of Terror - The River of Night's Dreaming

Mammoth Book of New Terror - The Fourth Seal

Mammoth Book of Zombies - Sticks

   The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales - The Last Wolf

All these except The Last Wolf can be found in Volume One.

The first of which being the strange and erotic novella The River of Night’s Dreaming which I came across in The Mammoth Book of Terror.  I had originally bought that book when I was a kid because I thought the cover looked cool.  It’s funny when I think about it but I couldn’t have been more than 11 or 12 when I bought that and I seriously doubt most book store cashiers would let a child buy a book with artwork that has a bunch of tiny monsters popping out of some dude's skin nowadays.  While that book sat around for a long enough time for me to mature enough to read it(and judging by how often I lost books, carelessly destroyed them, and loaned them out to friends who never returned them it’s a wonder I still have it and it’s still intact.) I bought a similar book(The Mammoth Book of Zombies, once again enticed by the cover) that was edited by the same guy and soon became a fan of his work as well.

A few short years after I bought these books Wagner died and his work was all but forgotten.  During this time I started gaining an interest in reading all those books I bought way back when and didn’t have the comprehension or patience to read.  I read The Mammoth Book of Terror cover to cover and the Karl Edward Wagner story remains one of my favorites.  Another one of the books I had that was just gathering dust was Kirby McCauley’s Dark Forces which introduced the world to Stephen King’s The Mist but also had a different Wagner story that I enjoyed.  From then on out I’d pick up Stephen Jones’ anthologies wherever I happened to see them and for a long time this was the only way I had of gathering a Wagner collection.  I’m not really giving publishers much credit here by drilling in the point that his work was nearly forgotten.  That’s not entirely true.  In the last 15 years or so several collections have been printed featuring his short stories and novels unfortunately they didn’t come to my attention soon enough before they went out of print and since Karl Edward Wagner is literature’s best kept secret there’s not a high enough demand to keep his books in circulation(meanwhile you can’t escape Stephenie Meyer’s presence at any bookstore, sometimes life just ain’t fair).

So when I learned of a publisher releasing two collections of his short stories earlier this year my broke ass saved every dime I could to be able to buy it.  I wasn’t just about to let this opportunity pass me by again and if I’ve at least piqued your curiosity I suggest you go to amazon or centipede’s website and order yourself a copy or two while you still can.  Copies of these two volumes are limited to 500.  However if you still have no interest in you could always search the internet for someone else who is better at explaining why Wagner is such a good author.

 These collections are outstanding and feature information about Wagner from friends Stephen Jones and Peter Staub as well as some amazing artwork.  If you're not acquainted with Wagner's works I suggest you pick up Volume One as it has some of his most popular and widely read stories.  The cover to Volume Two is a concept picture for The River of Night's Dreaming which is actually in Volume One.

Centipede Press 

Amazon's Karl Edward Wagner page 

Kirby's McCauley's Dark Forces now on Kindle 

Hesher

This movie looks awesome!  I don't know how this one flew under the radar for me but its got Metallica playing on the trailer, it was produced by Natalie Portman, and it stars an angry anarchistic slacker with long greasy hair.  Yep its almost like they ripped a page right out of my own book.

The Avengers - 2012

The Avengers - 2012

While I did really enjoy this movie there were a lot of things I took issue with.  While I never read the comics there are a few things I do know about The Avengers that it looked like they really screwed up.

1. Captain who?  - It’s my understanding that Captain America is the leader of The Avengers and while he is seen giving orders in one scene he does nothing to bring this iconic group of superheroes together.

 This is the US poster for the movie.  Notice how Captain America is in the background behind just about every character.  Judging by this poster they should have called the movie Iron Man and the Avengers.

 Now check out the cover for the straight to dvd animated feature Ultimate Avengers.  Notice how Captain America is front and center with everyone else behind him.

2. Hawkeye is a bad guy - As one of my favorite Avengers it just really pissed me off that he gets brainwashed by Loki in the first five minutes and stays that way for half the movie.  He doesn’t even have a chance to do or even say much before he betrays everyone.  He redeems himself in the end and his scenes are pretty badass but it doesn’t make up for all that happened earlier.

Stepping outside myself and my love for this character for a moment, this is just real shitty character development. Look at it this way how are most people supposed to establish that Hawkeye is a hero when he only got one minute of screen time in Thor and the next time we see him he becomes an easily led puppet?  Oh and by the way the perceived romance he has with Black Widow pissed me off too.

3.  Banner miscasting - I don’t care that they couldn’t get Ed Norton to reprise his role as Dr. Bruce Banner but the guy they replaced him with is just awful.

4. Quagmire - Nick Fury rushes to the war conclusion too readily.  Loki escapes that compound and the next we hear from Fury there’s a war.  When did he come to this conclusion and why?  For all he knows it’s just Loki and Hawkeye.

5.  BS technology -   Whenever I see a piece of tech that either can’t exist or has no reason to it takes me out of the movie.  I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw something as ridiculous or unnecessary as the FLYING AIRCRAFT CARRIER!!!  As soon as I saw this coming onscreen I said to myself, “They’re not going to go there,” and then, “I can’t fucking believe it”.  And that’s when I slapped my head.    First off there is NO FUCKING REASON IT SHOULD BE FLYING IN THE FIRST PLACE!  The one reason I can imagine it does is so they can get places faster but even that doesn’t make any sense because most of these super heroes can fly and the ones who can’t could easily fly out of there in one of the jets WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY DO AT THE END OF THE MOVIE!  Not to mention the fact that it does fly poses a major threat to anything they fly over.  Later in the movie the damned thing gets sabotaged and  they have to fix the problem or plunge to earth and kill themselves and everyone below them.  Second I don’t know jack shit about propulsion but even I know there’s no turbine in the fucking world big enough or powerful enough to lift an aircraft carrier.  Third, an aircraft carrier is not aerodynamic that’s why they’re designed for the sea and not the air.

6.  Dues Ex Machina City – At one point Thor is tricked into getting trapped in Loki’s prison as he escapes.  He tries to force his way out but all he manages to do is put a little crack in the glass.  His imprisonment leads to the death of a main character but when the cell is jettisoned and plummeting to earth Thor easily escapes by breaking through the glass.

(Huge Spoilers)  Towards the end of the movie against Nick Fury’s orders the unseen syndicate that gives S.H.I.E.L.D its orders sends a nuclear missile at the city despite the fact that there’s no threat of the Chitauri army escaping the city.  Iron Man then uses this missile to blow up the Chitauri mothership which disables all their troops on earth.  I didn’t even know they were robots until this point.  In fact they zoom in on a few of them and they appear to have creature like faces.  Assuming these things are robots of some kind the movie does nothing to establish this nor do they explain who they are, where they come from, or why they want to rule the earth, they just do.  The Citauri are the biggest MacGuffin  I’ve seen in a movie in a long time.  Really they only exist so The Avengers have something to beat up in the final act of the movie.  I also find it a little ironic that this is how they saved the day in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace which also starred Samuel L. Jackson.  When will alien invaders learn that organic soldiers don’t malfunction when your mothership gets destroyed?

7. HULK AGAIN!!!  The inconsistencies with the Hulk are enough to transform me into a giant green rage monster.  My younger brother often plays devil’s advocate whenever I point out plot inconsistencies that leave huge gaping holes in the suspension of disbelief.  In the last act of the movie Bruce Banner transforms into the Hulk again only this time instead of attacking everything in sight it only focuses on the bad guys except for a scene where it punches Thor in comic relief.  Not even he was willing to defend that.

8.  Not enough heroic sequences – I had the same problem with this that I did with Iron Man.  I’m not saying all they have to do is run around rescuing cats out of trees but seeing these superheroes actually saving someone every once in a while would be nice.  In The Avengers all they do is fight things.  In the Spiderman movies we see him saving people all the time. (I realize towards the end they do some pseudo saving people but they’re not actually saving them they’re just telling them to find shelter.)

9. Meh – It’s more of a personal thing but it pissed me off when someone told Captain America Thor was a god and he said quote, “There’s only one god and he doesn’t dress like that.”

I find it odd that a 72 minute animated movie establishes its characters and plot better than a live action movie that’s longer, has a better budget, and an a list cast.  I’d hate to say it but Ultimate Avengers is a far superior movie, but I still liked this one and expect to buy it as soon as it comes out.

IMDB Ultimate Avengers

In spite of all the problems I mentioned I give this movie an 85 +B.  It’s got issues but it’s still a fun and enjoyable movie if you can forgive some of those issues.

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer 2(AKA Forget Me Not)

I was browsing Youtube videos when I came across a surprisingly bad trailer for a movie I'd never heard of that I'm sure is just as bad if not worse than trailer.

It's painfully clear this is a carbon copy of I Know What You Did Last Summer with some scary ghost effects.  There's just so many things to pick apart on this trailer but even more than the unoriginality and bad acting is the forced sex appeal.  Hey guys you know you want to see this because it's got chicks in bikinis.  What's more is how these people act.  I know people are assholes, and I know some people get excited about graduating, but I've never seen anyone hang out the side of a moving car while yelling that at the top of their lungs.  It reminds me of the beginning of Cabin Fever where a college girl yells out the side of a pickup to some children, "Fuck college.  You should never go to college!"

Mission Earth - The Invaders Plan Pt. 3

Mission Earth Pt. 3 When Krak Attacks

“In my room, Heller got my clothes off me and put me in the bath and when he had the mesh washed away he got me into bed.”

(beginning of chapter 4, when I read that I was sure I was reading gay erotica)

        Every time I felt like reading something my hand would pass over this book and it started to tremble a little.  Needless to say every time I felt like reading I played video games or goofed off on the internet for a little while instead.  That’s how bad the last part of this book was.  With that said I was shocked when I found out how easy this 100 pages was to read.

There’s a lot of reasons why I struggled so much with the first 100 pages, poorly conceived characters, bull(bleep) technology, juvenile writing, bad narration, but the biggest reason I had so much trouble was that nothing was happening.  That’s changed quite a bit now.  When I picked up the book again I was expecting the same ole (bleep) but instead Hubbard chose to focus more on the characters this time and while they’re still poorly conceived(all of them, there are no exceptions) it grabbed my attention enough to actually enjoy what I was reading for a while.

Once again Jettero Heller is more immaculate than Jesus himself as he fraternizes with guards, flirts with inmates, impossibly maps the prison, and wins a fixed game of dice(another Hubbard invented Voltarian game).  I feel that this statement might contradict itself, but Jettero Heller’s flawlessness makes him a very flawed character.  It’s just very aggravating and tiring and gets worse the more I read.  No character I’ve ever read in any other book fails to make mistakes, always says or does the right things, or never comes into conflict with anyone.  Is this what Hubbard meant when he said satire?  There’s a reason I’ve never read a book or story with a character like Heller, anyone reading it would become uninterested and stop reading.  I feel like a broken record here but every time Heller is presented with a challenge or problem I know he’s going to glide through it without so much as a bump in the road.

As we start with this part Jettero has charmed the platoon commandant, Snelz, and they’re chatting and eating sweet buns and drinking sparkle water(I figure it champagne in this world).  Next it’s off to Countess Krak(god I feel like giggling every time I have to write that name) supposedly to learn earth languages and how to be a better spy.  Countess Krak was briefly introduced last time but gets elaborated on more now.  While Countess Krak was a school teacher she trained children to be assassin thieves.  Countess Krak possesses an uncanny ability to train people.  Kind of a lame super power but if I was to create a superhero(or villian) named Countess Crack her superpower would be every time she saw someone with low riding underwear or visible cracks she could mysteriously give them a wedgie.

Instead of take the elevator(or tubes) Heller insists they walk all the way to Krak’s training room.  Using the soles of his clunky boots and his watch he’s able to map out the entire complex that goes from the depths of the earth to the clouds in the sky.  Now let’s focus on why he does this.  I HAVE NO (BLEEPING) CLUE!!!  Trust me after I read this I pondered this for a while and every scenario I came up with didn’t make any logical sense.  I figured it might be foreshadowing an escape but it turns out this scene was just written to display Hubbard’s love for Jettero Heller.  He even tells Soltan he knew when the temperature dropped half a degree and I’m sure not even the most hypersensitive animal can feel that.

Inside Krak’s training room(that sounds like an all-male bathhouse) she’s yelling and whipping apparatus agents as they flee for their lives from both her and a large angry catlike animal.  This is a really bad and confusing transition.  Just to get idea of what I’m talking about one minute we’re outside with Heller and Gris talking about how he mapped the entire prison using just his boots, watch, and a hypersensitivity to temperature change, and the next we’re inside Krak’s training room where all hell is breaking loose.  I haven’t read a transition this bad since The Dresden Files Blood Rites where the book starts off with him running from flying poop throwing monkeys with no explanation of what he’s doing or why he’s there.  I guess Hubbard was trying to establish Countess Krak as a strong, independent, woman before he turned her into a stupid, drooling, love struck, slut by the time she meets Heller.

Countess Krak runs a circus and freak show for the apparatus and Lombar Hiist sent her lepertige that’s been declawed.  She explains that is more difficult to train injured animals and tells them to tell their boss if he sends her another damaged animal she’ll train it to kill him.  Countess Krak is described as a beautiful but deadly and extremely temperamental woman and yet Jettero Heller manages to charm without the slightest of difficulty, big surprise.  I don’t know why he’s so attracted to her after all his first impression of her she’s yelling, tossing guys around, and threatening people not to mention she’s in prison for training young children how to kill for her.  Does that sound like someone you’d want to take home to meet your mom?  This romance seems even more plotted and ludicrous when you consider Heller is a marine and hero.  That’s like Captain America shacking up with the Black Widow.  Once again is this the satire Hubbard was talking about?  If so it’s not very clever.

Heller woos her with the oldest line in the world(the book even says this as he asks why a beautiful thing like her is doing in a place like this.  I don’t know women at all but has that seriously ever worked?!) and actually succeeds as she breaks down crying for no reason.  From this point on Countess Krak will make up any flimsy excuse to see Heller. 

The next time we see her she’s cleaning up her dingy training room so she can impress Heller.  When Sultan Gris sits on a chair she’s assigned for Heller she freaks and jerks him out of the chair.  We also see a personality shift in Countess Krak, rather than beat and berate her servants she’s patient, understanding, and polite.

So in the small amount of time since she’s met Jettero Heller she’s gone from an antisocial, psychotic, dominatrix to a blubbering, diplomatic, matron.  I’ve never seen a character take such a dramatic change so quickly.  This must be another example of Hubbard’s misplaced idea of satire but at least she’s a fun character and her presence throughout this part makes the pages fly by a little faster.

At this point it should be obvious that Countess Krak and Jettero Heller start an artificial and forced romance.  Because she’s still a prisoner she has to smuggle herself in boxes up to Gris’ room.  The book isn’t clear about this but I believe they’re having sex because they ask Gris to excuse himself.  Sultan Gris takes this time to dig up dirt on Heller and finds that not only is he rich but has a weakness for gambling and yep you guessed it he never loses.

In an effort to financially break Heller Gris acquires some fixed dice and the help of Snelz.  It’s believed by Soltan Gris if Heller has no money to bride guards to bring up Krak every night he’ll be more likely to immerse himself in mission earth.  As soon as this plan was hatched I knew it was going to fail and here’s why: it’s Sultan Gris’ idea and even though he’s got a surefire way to win it was destined to fail simply because he’s Soltan Gris, it’s a plan from an entirely flawed character against a godlike one of course it’s going to fail, this book has become painfully predictable.

I’m not one of those smug jackasses who always says they saw the plot twist or ending coming but this book has become more see thru than a ziplock bag.  Snelz agrees to help(but only because Gris threatens to kill him) and Soltan advances a year’s pay of 5,000 credits.  Gris is unable to watch as he is summoned by the geneticist Lombar Hisst ordered them to go to so they could breath,  move, and look more like humans.  Soltan Gris has been avoiding him because for some reason every time he’s around him he gets violently ill.  Professor Crobe threatens to tell Hisst about Gris avoiding him unless he bribes him 200 credits.

      When Gris gets back somehow Snelz has lost every bit of his money.  Heller offers to let Snelz have it back but he refuses.  The next time we see Gris he’s on a mountain contemplating suicide when Snelz shows up, now he’s contemplating a murder/suicide.  I can’t say I blame him either Snelz shows up like nothing’s wrong is chatty, pleasant, and jovial.  If someone lost $5,000 of my own money and came over to me like nothing happen I’d toss their dumbass right over that (bleeping) cliff.

        Snelz explains to Gris the reason the dice failed was because the gel inside them melted every time they threw the dice so the ball bearings wouldn’t stay in place.  He offers Gris 10 credits he had someone snatch from someone else and that give Gris just enough money to bribe Crobe.  Thus ends part 4.

I know I’m being generous here but I score this 80 –B.  I was and still am surprised how quickly this 100 pages went by.  That’s not to say it’s still bad.  The writing is still very poor and clichéd at times, nothing interesting happens to the uninteresting characters, and no matter what everything always goes Jettero Heller’s way.  Because of all these things, but in particular the last one, this book is still bland, boring, and predictable.   Also I was hoping by the time I got this far in the book they might already be on earth.  At this pace I doubt they’re going to get there by the end of this book.