Monthly Archives: May 2014

May 24, 2014 · 5:04 pm

One more movie and some time-travel television (#SFWApro)

LAND OF THE LOST (2009) is one of the many TV-show remakes that’s cropped up on the big screen in recent years, here starring Will Ferrell as a discredited scientist whose experimental time/space device lands him and his sidekicks in a parallel world where “past, present and future meet” only to find Leonard Nimoy plotting evil. This falls awkwardly between two stools—for the most part it’s played straight (rather than a full-on lampoon like Bewitched or Starsky and Hutch) which works better for me as a fan of the show, but when it does play for laughs it feels forced, like they were afraid to go 100 percent straight. It is full of references and some twists on the original (the 1991 revival might never have happened which is fine with me) which makes me wonder how totally newbies reeact? Overall, closer to a hit than I expected.

I’ve now watched the first two seasons of Australia’s 1999 series THUNDERSTONE, a Boys’ Own adventure (the term refers to an old magazine for schoolboys full of plucky British kids having incredible adventures and saving their country) that opens in 2020, when a subterranean Aussie research base is the only place where humans have survived the icea age brought on by the Nemesis comet striking Earth. When young Noah (Jeffrey Daniels) transports himself 60 years in the future, he finds humanity has returned to the surface (visually ripping off Road Warrior), but animal life is dead. With the help of the Nomad leader Arushka (Mereoni Vuki), Noah begins bringing animals to the future from before the Cataclysm. However this puts him in conflict with the Protectors who are trying to force everyone to mine thunderstone (fragments of the comet) for their boss, the Shadow Master. This starts slow but gets very entertaining by the finish, and I do like the terrified unease of the future people to animals (“The ‘puppy’ licked me—is it venomous?”).
The second season has the future adjusting to a Protector free world and finding that with the danger gone, it’s a lot harder to stay unified. Then enter a mysterious group of siblings with a hidden agenda … This has a surprising ending in which Noah travels back in time and uses thunderstone to destroy the comet so the ice age never happens, setting up for a very different Season Three (though conveniently, all the core cast survive with their memories intact).

The first season of Britain’s MISFITS has a quintet of uncouth teens assigned to probation for their various misdeeds only to be struck by a freak lightning storm that endows them all with super-powers. This qualifies for my book by having one of them get the ability to trigger do-overs, which plays a major role in one episode (he attempts to rewind time to keep his girlfriend out of jail, but discovers he’s only creating worse problems); while I haven’t finished the second season yet, I will say that qualifies even more. I can see why several people recommended this to me.

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Filed under Movies, Now and Then We Time Travel, TV

May 24, 2014 · 4:48 pm

Time travel today, other reviews tomorrow (#SFWApro)

Got up late, went for a five-mile walk, went shopping, then had gardening to do with TYG, so not as much down time as I expected.
As DARK MIRROR (2007) supposedly involved a mirror opening to an alternate reality, I thought it was possibly qualified for the book but no: The other reality is an occult prison from which a protagonist accidentally releases a vengeful spirit, leading to what else, death and more death? Not good, and not going in the book. “I’ll look at this imaginary door tomorrow.”
THE CHRISTMAS CLAUSE (2008) stars Lea Thompson as a harried attorney/mom whose Christmas wish unintentionally turns her into an unmarried legal shark, thereby erasing her marriage and kids from reality. This follows the standard pattern for parallel-life movies of making her appreciate how good her real world is, though blaming everything on her (too controlling, not a caring enough mom) seems both unfair and sexist. The humor here is pretty flat—Thompson learns what’s happened almost immediately but they still walk her through the usual cliches of wondering why friends and lovers don’t remember the same things she does. “So you’re dead and you need to help me get into heaven—could this be any more cliché?”
SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED (2012) is a comedy from the creators of Little Miss Sunshine in which an intern reporter investigates a man who claims he wants a partner for a time-travel trip and begins falling in love despite the fact he’s obviously crazy, right? The fact he turns out to be on the level doesn’t really work because he still comes off more as someone lying about his past mistakes—I suspect having time-travel be real was supposed to be just one more quirky touch, but this actually gets soft and conventional starting halfway through. Not a success, but a near miss “Think about it when the heat’s moving in.”
PRINCE OF PERSIA: The Sands of Time(2010) shows some people just don’t know how to swash a buckler—this kind of sword-and-sandal actioner (noble hero vs. evil usurper with brave princess Gemma Aterton caught in the middle) needs a light-hearted touch but as the protagonist Jake Gyllenhaal is as serious as if it were Ibsen, and even comic relief Alf Molina ain’t that comical. This makes the egregious racebending (the only nonwhite among the leads is Ben Kingsley, and he plays the bad guy) all the more annoying as it’s clearly not a compromise to get great actors in the film. However as the McGuffin is a magic hourglass that will let Kingsley rewrite history, it clearly goes in the book.“No matter your skills as a promoter, you can’t organize an ostrich race with just one ostrich.”
AGAINST TIME (2001) is, like Flight That Disappeared, a view of history-changing from the changee rather than the changer, the protagonist being a teenage science whiz and baseball player whose drunken future self (Robert Loggia) warns him he’s about to make a mistake that will ruin his life. This is too amiable and sweet for me, but I give the creators points for subtlety—it’s clear what the fatal incident is and why, but they don’t spell it out. On the downside, this falls into the grandfather paradox as the ending erases Loggia’s visit from history (so if he never get back, how did his younger self avoid screwing up?). With Craig T. Nelson and John Amos in supporting roles. “What does that do to my future if I go to jail for killing myself?”
IT HAPPENED HERE (1965) is a somber alternate history in which a nurse in 1945 occupied Britain goes to work for the Nazis as it’s the only way to practice her profession but finds keep herself from getting involved politically (“I just want things to be normal.”) is increasingly difficult. The black-and-white, low-key style is extremely effective, and the story makes most of the characters grey rather than black-and-white—only a few people are really ardent Nazis the rest just see themselves struggling to get by. “If we don’t want to be overrun by a horde of damned Bolsheviks, we’ve got to be more organized than they are!”

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Filed under Movies, Now and Then We Time Travel

May 24, 2014 · 9:34 am

Boosting the signal (#SFWApro)

Angela Korra’ti, whom I know online, has a Boosting the Signal feature on her blog to promote indie and self-published books, so this week she graciously posted one for Philosophy and Fairytales, my short story collection. In it, Serena Dean, the protagonist of Original Synergy, explains why joining the Knights Templar hasn’t been the smart career move she expected.

Eighty percent of a good week (#SFWApro)

Today being the bad 20 percent. I have a tendency to sleep very poorly when I’m stressed and it doesn’t take much stress. And last night apparently worry about the deadlines I was juggling on a couple of projects got to me. I got up and worked on ’em, but I didn’t get much else done. Of course, I also had to mail some stuff for Mum, deal with a contractor and do a little baking for friends, so I have some excuse.
Plus I’m trying to watch as much stuff for the Time Travel on Screen book as possible, and even though it’s fun watching films for work, it can make it hard to turn it off, walk away and just not be working on it. So that probably contributed to my stress.
The end result was that my fiction production this week was again very sub-par. I did finish rewriting Kernel of Truth, based on an editor who said he’d happily look at it again if I made some changes. As they were good suggestions, I figured that was a win even he says no to the rewrite.
And I did figure out where my problem was in Southern Discomfort, so that’s back on track, but didn’t get very far down the track.
I did several articles for Demand Media and completed most of the work on another freelance assignment, and without wasting much time on it either. I have a bad habit of approaching nonfiction jobs as if I were still on the clock and could dawdle, so perhaps I’m getting past that.
And I sent out one magazine query and a couple of freelance job queries.
On the downside, I had one small project that might have netted me $100 (one of the ones I worked on last night), but I don’t think the guy I talked to is going to be able to get approval from his employer to be quoted. And I don’t have an alternative. However, I could still hear something late tonight, so fingers crossed.
My fiction performance still really sucked, but I can make up at least a little of that next week.

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Filed under Nonfiction, Now and Then We Time Travel, Personal, Short Stories, Southern Discomfort, Time management and goals, Writing

May 22, 2014 · 7:40 pm

The Civil War was a fight over the right to own slaves (and other links)

I recently mentioned a right-winger equating Southern secession with leaving an abusive husband. Now a right-wing pundit says the war was really over states’ rights, not race and Lincoln’s Gettysburg address would have been better if he’d addressed it to the heroic Southerners fighting tyranny by seceding.
The pundit, Dave Daubenmire, is either ignorant or lying, because the right at issue was the right to own slaves. Period. It wasn’t some abstract philosophy about state power, it was about the federal government having “denounced the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection … A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.”
In case you’re wondering, that’s from South Carolina’s secession declaration. Back then, they didn’t make any bones about their intentions. Why would they? Slavery was something they were proud of. In fact the declaration says specifically they’ve been holding back on seceding out of deference to other “slaveholding states,” not free states, not Southern states, just slaveholding.
•A Bible-based claim for gay rights is by definition unbiblical, according to one right-wing religious group. Slacktivist weighs in.
•A great linkpost from Slacktivist. Topics include a school district that says students who don’t want to hear Christian prayers should go to another school; Tom Delay declaring God wrote the Constitution; an official who says he’d never vote for a non-Christian to offer an invocation because that would violate his rights; and this post by Americans United for Separation of Church and State pointing out American religion is anything but oppressed.
•And no, the rich are not oppressed either. Nor are straight people.

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Filed under Politics

May 22, 2014 · 7:15 pm

Comes the Millenium … in 1988 (#SFWApro)

So as part of rereading my Green Lantern collection, I recently reread the 1987 Millenium limited series, which tied into it. I’ve rarely seen it get any love in comics discussions, so as this is my blog, I’m going to argue that it’s much better than it’s given credit for.
First, the backstory: A couple of years earlier, Hal Jordan’s girlfriend gave him an ultimatum to quit being Green Lantern or she was breaking up with him. Not the first time a super-hero’s contemplated quitting, but remarkably, Hal did (at the time, that was a shock). John Stewart (the black GL in the Justice League cartoons) took over, but then along came the Crisis on Infinite Earths. The first big crossover event, it had Hal going back into action when he discovers his immortals masters the Guardians of the Universe have made a huge miscalculation that could hand victory to the alien Anti-Monitor. After the good guys win, the Guardians decide they need a long vacation, alongside their long-estranged spouses. The Green Lantern Corps was given its independence and told to spread out across the cosmos—except Earth, where the next race of immortals would someday be born. Earth could have as many GLs as it likes.
Steve Englehart, the GL writer at the time, said later he didn’t mean anything by that except an excuse to have multiple aliens join John and Hal (a good decision, his run on the book was awesome). When he was assigned the writing for DC’s third big crossover (following Crisis and Legends), he suddenly thought hmmm …
(Cover by Joe Staton, rights with current holder)
In the first issue of Millenium, one guardian and one spouse show up and gather Earth’s heroes, asking them to find the new immortals so the Guardians can train them. Unfortunately, the Guardian’s mortal foes, the Manhunters, know about the immortals too. And if the Guardians want something, the Manhunters are determined they not have it.
I rank this as one of DC’s best crossovers for several reasons:
•Speed. Millenium was weekly, so the whole thing took less than two months. A vast improvement over the 21st century when the big events just never stop coming. And things just felt like they were happening really fast.
•Concept: It turns out the Manhunters have planted sleeper agents around all of Earth’s super-heroes, waiting for the day they were needed. Some have been corrupted, some blackmailed, some, such as Commissioner Gordon and most of Smallville, mind-controlled (the town doctor was a Manhunter, so he implanted stuff when everyone was kids). Having enemies lurking among you, posing as friends, is an effective plot device, and Englehart got maximum mileage out of it.
•Nostalgia. I don’t know why, but I got a huge nostalgia buzz off reading this series. Seeing all the old 1980s heroes (original Suicide Squad, original Outsiders, Captain Atom, Booster Gold, the Teen Titans of the day, etc.) made me feel surprisingly happy—surprising because I rarely react that way, even reading books from my childhood. Go figure.
•Race. Englehart gets flak for using lots of stereotypes in creating his “new Guardians,” like a swishy gay guy whose eventual super-name is “the Strange.” Fair enough … but on the other hand, the series ended with a team composed of half women, and entirely nonwhite (unless you count the originally white but now a plant Floronic Man). That’s something you don’t see even now. So all things considered, thumbs up.
The one real downside is that Englehart shows us, in detail, the initiation of the New Guardians, which gives him an excuse to wax philosophical and explain the universe. It doesn’t work. Explaining the universe never works and it’s never as insightful as the writer thinks (I have the same problem with some of Englehart’s Max August books).
I’d have been interested in seeing what Englehart did with the New Guardians, but it was not to be. They got a series, but when his editor told him to put “the Strange” back in the closet, Englehart walked (he says on his website he’d promised a free hand tackling sex, drugs and religion). Then they turned Green Lantern into a weekly feature in Action (a weekly at the time) and that format didn’t suit him and collaborator Joe Staton (too bad, because the strip we did get was horrendous).
But when the Millenium began, it was pretty cool.

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Filed under Comics, Reading

May 21, 2014 · 2:25 pm

Links and punishment

Megan McArdle’s response to people who criticize income inequality: isn’t having tenure or a long-term contract very valuable? Isn’t loving your job very valuable? So really talking about inequality is silly because “wealth” is so much more than money.
This, of course, is basically a way to dodge the question. It’s documented that income inequality has a lot of bad effects, so I think McArdle’s fudging because she doesn’t have a good counter-attack. This is, after all, the woman who claimed equality of opportunity is a bad thing (because poor people could take a rich person’s job!), poverty is all the result of bad life decisions, that twentysomethings could get good jobs if they just try, and that it’s much worse when rich people lose jobs than poor people (don’t have the link handy).
•Doctors keep prescribing antibiotics, even when they don’t help.
•Republicans have preserved a program that provides meals to poor kids, but only in rural areas.
•In South Florida, a festival float by the Sons of Confederate Veterans includes a man with a whip. But they insist that’s not a reference to slavery.
•Mississippi has passed a law allowing businesses to refuse any law that burdens the owners’ religious freedom (this is seen as an anti-gay measure—I discuss similar laws here—though sponsors deny that). Some businesses respond by posting We Don’t Discriminate stickers. The religious right freaks out and insists the stickers are an attack on Christianity (though the quoted blog post doesn’t appear on the website it links to). Meanwhile, in Texas, a politician admits that a similar measure would allow a business to refuse Jews, but says that’s irrelevant.
•Despite being discredited and exposed as a fraud years ago, conservative preacher Mike Warnke still has fans. Apparently you can fool some of the people all of the time.
•The authors of Freakanomics try to convince the British government that paying for Brits’ health care is no different from giving everyone in the country a car (i.e., it’s bad).
•David Brooks says democracy is bad because it stops people slashing the safety net as much as he wants. If it’s not following his policies, clearly it has failed! Wonkblog explains that’s wrong, as does Paul Krugman.
Of course, Brooks has always been keen on the old days when a sexist, racist, anti-Semitic clique ran everything from the top down and imposed Order on society. So this new line fits right in. As Echidne of the Snakes says (mentioned at the link) he’d theoretically love Saudi Arabia, where a tight little elite imposes social cohesion and law with zero democracy. Yet, somehow, we’re stuck with him.

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Filed under economics, Politics

May 21, 2014 · 1:49 pm

Book bucket list (#SFWApro)

AbeBooks proposes a book bucket list. Th idea is to read at least one book in each category: historical novel, SF book, graphic novel, Bohemian novel, weird book, Jane Austen book, a book about betrayal, a signed book, etc. The last category shows, I think, the primary purpose of the list (buy stuff from AbeBooks!) but I still like the idea. And skimming categories, I can see several interesting books (and obviously having only 400 books on my to-read list isn’t enough).
And dang it, I loooove Abe’s weird books list. It’s hard not to be intrigued by books such as How to Poo on a Date, Bombproof Your Horse, Teach Your Wife to be a Widow, How to Make Love While Conscious, Increasing Laundry Output and A Guide To Bone Toothbrushes of the 19th and Early 20th Centuries. On the other hand, some of them seem pretty cool—I actually have One Good Turn, an excellent history of screws and screwdrivers by Witold Rybczynski. Still, there’s always A New Look at Wifeswapping.

Linking while watching movies again

Specifically Prince of Persia, which qualifies for the book despite the annoying racebending. Okay, links:
•Lee Bright, a South Carolina Republican explains (hmm, raceplains?) that the Civil War was the South leaving an “abusive husband” and the abuser (the Union) refusing to let go.
•Right-winger Tony Perkins explains the First Amendment doesn’t protect pro-gay beliefs because they’re not real religion (“There is no place, there is nothing for them to stand on and say that same-sex marriage has standing in the orthodox Christian faith.”). Of course, there’s nothing in Jesus’ teaching about how we should kiss the ass of the rich as Bryan Fischer does. Somehow I don’t think that’s going to press Perkins’ buttons the same way gay rights does. And as I’ve said before, does Perkins really think government should decide on which is the true religion? (Answer: Yes so long as government picks him).
•A consumer has sued Sandy Springs Georgia, where you need a prescription to buy sex toys. Don’t be too surprised, there are a number of Southern cities that have limited, or tried to limit, the right to sell (or buy) sex gadgets.
•Confronted with growing evidence of climate change, right-bloggers say we should ignore it any way.
•Arizona Repub Gary Kiehne claims 99 percent of shooters are Democrats. Here we have some gun supporters going over the edge when confronted by anti-gun women. And here are warnings of Obama readying the US military to fire on American citizens (presumably the ones who don’t get locked up in the equally mythical FEMA death camps or denied life-saving drugs by the death panels).
•You may have heard that Jill Abramson, the first executive editor at the New York Times, got fired recently. Discussions and comparisons with the firing of the previous (male) editor by Echidne, Echidne again, LGM and The Nation.
•And this critique of Tal Fortgang, a Princeton student who’s gotten a lot of attention for his insistence he doesn’t have white privilege.

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May 19, 2014 · 7:08 pm

Stranger/Stranger/Citizen (#SFWApro)

Bud Foote’s A Connecticut Yankee in the Twentieth Century: Travel to the Past in Science Fiction focuses, obviously, on travel to the past, but Foote’s insights, as I note at the link, apply to other types of time-travel as well.
One of his points is that you can look at time travelers as shifting between the role of stranger (out of place in a particular era, even if it’s their home) and citizen (they’re home, even if it’s 100 or 500 or 5,000 years ago).
I’ve noticed that in parallel-world stories, the usual progression is stranger/stranger/citizen. The protagonist starts out restless and unhappy, frustrated that their life hasn’t turned out the way they planned, maybe wishing they’d married someone else, taken a different job, done something with their degree. Then in some fashion, they jump into a parallel timeline where their dream comes true—and realize they’ve never appreciated their wonderful old life. When they return home, it’s to happiness and a new appreciation for what they have.
In The Christmas Clause (2008), which I caught today, Lea Thompson is a stressed out mother and lawyer, reaching the breaking point in both roles. A chance wish gives her the life she might have had if she’d dumped her boyfriend in college instead of marrying him, but that means her three kids don’t even exist. Needless to say by the time she returns, she’s overjoyed to have her old life back (with a few changes, such as ditching her jerk boss).
Likewise, in Twice Upon a Time (1998), Molly Ringwald is frustrated at work and reluctant to accept her boyfriend’s proposal, especially when her ex is now a superstar ball player. A shift into a parallel world where she’s still with the ball player and much more successful makes her happy—for a while—but she soon realizes she’s picked the wrong man once again.
In Flashpoint Paradox (2013), Flash gets to restore his murdered mother to life, but creates a nightmare dystopia before realizing there are some things even the fastest man alive can’t change.
It’s not a universal rule. In Family Man (2000), Nicholas Cage goes citizen/citizen/citizen. He starts out loving his life as a superstar stock trader but he soon comes to love the alternative life where he married his college girlfriend and works in a tire store. When he returns to reality, he finds his girlfriend (Tea Leoni) and sets to work building a synthesis of both worlds.
In Comfort and Joy (2004), Nancy McKeon appears to be happy as a high-powered executive, but being a Lifetime TV movie, she’s in “stranger” mode, miserable because her boyfriend won’t commit. When she wakes up in the alt.world where she’s a stay-at-home mom, she goes from stranger to citizen, loving her new life. After she comes home, she goes looking for her alt.husband so that she can finally be “citizen” in her own world.
Regardless of the exact structure, the parallel world serves mostly as a personal-growth tool: by living a What If the protagonist learns what they’ve been missing, then returns home with new understanding.