Ancient Logic

On to movies. Overall, 2017 was a great year for speculative movies. Three above average MCU movies, a bunch of interesting reboots, and a Star Wars movie makes for a decent period to be an SFF fan. Correspondingly, I ended up seeing relatively fewer non-SFF movies this year despite there being several (Baby Driver, Wind River) that I really do want to see.  "Chasm" by Morgan Crooks (2017) Below are my picks for the movies of the year. #1: Dunkirk. No real surprise there. I felt this was basically the movie of the year in July and little transpired between then and now to change my mind. Essentially this is a war movie built around a complicated structure weaving three disparate threads into one complete narrative. I'm not someone who thinks all war-movies are anti-war simply by virtue of showing the terrible fates of young men. This movie, for example, strikes a bleak and, at times despairing tone, to bring the drama of sacrifice on the beach of Dunki...

Waiting for the opening crawl for Episode VIII, I thought about what I wanted The Last Jedi to include. What stuck in my head was I wanted to 'learn something.' I think I assumed there would be plenty of action, daring rescues, a bit of humor and amazing spectacles. (First SPOILER among many to follow - there are) But, I ask a bit more from movies like Star Wars. As foolish as this perhaps sounds, I wanted this movie to always be about something. More than Rey's parentage or the mystery of Snoke, I wanted some greater message from the experience.  Rose Zico and Finn in Canto Bight. So what did I learn? Towards the end of the movie, Rose prevents Finn from sacrificing his life (most likely in vain). Catching up with her, Finn asks her why. Rose's reply, "to save what I love," stuck with me. In ways both big and small, this movie invested a lot of energy into describing and elaborating upon that message. The heroes are never more heroic than when th...

There are some albums I buy that lift me off the floor the second I hear two or three songs, and compel daily repeat listens until I exhaust every ounce of interest I ever had in them. There are other albums I feel sort of meh about initially which grow on me over time until they become something indispensable. What I'm trying to get at is there are some works of art that burn like incredibly bright fireworks only to vanish utterly and then there are works with enduring value. One side of ledger you have Offspring's "Smash" which I absolutely adored in 1994 and can safely say I've never listened to once since. On the other you have PJ Harvey's "To Bring You My Love" which I put on at least once every month. What's the difference? I think there is a certain type of art that leans hard on the spectacle, the easy and cheap emotional high requiring little deep investment of emotion for a pay off. Another type of artist is willing to sacrif...

I'm back home from Arisia 2017 and other than being completely exhausted I'm feeling very good about the experience. To sum up my impressions of the panels, experiences, and spectacles of this year's con I guess I'd say the theme was communication. Me at the "Alien in Aliens" panel, Arisia 2017 (photographer: Lauren Crooks) During my first panel, Putting the Alien in Aliens with Steve Popkes, Dennis McCunney, and Sonia Taaffe, the conversation centered around this question of communication. In comparison to other panels centered on this topic - the creation and appreciation of truly alien extraterrestrials - the focus here was not so much the biology or composition of the aliens as the limited ability of we poor human beings to understand any potential creature from another solar system. Is this even possible or plausible? Or is communication with aliens one more implausible feature of science fiction we all collectively ignore like faster than ...

For my second year-end post, I'd like to talk about movies. There are five movies that stuck with me this year, perhaps not the five best movies, but certainly good ones that meant something to me. From my limited perspective as a routine movie-goer the gap between blockbuster movies and "quality films" continues to grow each year. Are these even in the same genre anymore? While certainly the basic technology employed by movies and films is the same (except when it isn't) the point of films seems to be diverging. The point of a movie like Marvel's Captain America: Civil War is to serve as the vehicle for cathartic spectacle while the point of my favorite movie is something closer to communication - the passing on of knowledge to the audience. In principle, I enjoy both modes but I wish they would cross-pollinate a bit more. It is the rare movie, (The Lord of Rings Trilogy, Star Wars, and Interstellar come to mind) that seems to want to do both: to create a grand ...

I have to admit it took a little while to get into the new Star Wars movie. The beginning felt weird to me: both in terms of the scattered, start/stop nature of the set-up and also, being honest, the lack of the title crawl. I know it's a small thing but details matter. Without the crawl, some part of the task of determining what is going on and how it fits in with everything else falls to the viewer. Perhaps that's the point here. Without the frame of mythology and a redemption arc, how does the conflict of Star Wars look to the people who actually fought it?  Gareth Edwards, the director of the new movie, makes some wise decisions early on, despite the muddle: Jyn's story of lost parents and abandonment is classic storytelling in the epic mode - certainly something Star Wars fans have come to expect from the franchise. Overall, though, none of that really mattered. The ending for this movie is tremendous, perfectly setting up Episode 4, giving a sense of the sa...

Star Wars: The Force Awakened makes me care about Star Wars again. In a year filled with great science fiction and fantasy films, this movie finds its own special place. The thing about thinking about an experience after you've had it, is that it is already an admixture - part of what you are feeling now  will always affect what you thought you felt then . As best I can resurrect, what I felt watching Star Wars two nights ago was sheer joy. From the opening crawl to the final credits, I spent long, long moments completely immersed in this movie, completely enthralled. I liked a number of movies this year, but this might be the only one that grabbed my attention and never let go. Even Guardians of the Galaxy, which was an accomplished space opera, couldn't really match this movie's most effortless achievement - creating a whole bunch of characters I understood and cared about in a personal way. I think the first and most apparent level of this movie is that personal ...

Because I've said something about the other Star Wars trailers, I think I'll put down a few quick impressions of the most recent one. In short, I'm still really impressed. The mood here is what really strikes me. The cinematography is straightforward and yet different somehow from other science fiction epics. I think part of this has to do with the avoidance of simple orange/blue color palettes (although I could be mistaken on that). There's a bit more going on in the X-Wing and Tie-Fighter battle than what we saw in the previous trailers but this is still not the gobs of unnecessary FX of the prequels. As many observers noted, there also seems to be a real focus on emotional impact. In particular, the confrontation between Kylo Ren (he of the radioactive cross guard lightsaber) and Finn registers as very dangerous. The short scene gives us Ren dominating the frame, Finn backed into one corner of the shot. If that is the direction J.J. Abrams goes with the lightsab...

The difference between a good trailer and a great/legendary trailer  lies not so much in what the trailer contains but rather in what it does. The new Star Wars trailer does more than simply remind fans of why they might want to see the movie, it creates demand for something they didn’t realize they wanted. The opening shot of the trailer, a land speeder glinting in the desert sun as it passes first a downed X-wing and then the derelict hulk of a star destroyer creates instantly a sense of place and time, it generates a question to be answered. How did the enormous spaceship come to this place. Who is passing in front of it? Where and when is this exactly? The place is familiar but different (Jakku instead of Tatooine). The time is clearly after, a period moved on from what we know. There are echoes of what came before - the mysterious and already much-disected pronouncement from Luke Skywalker, the storm-troopers, and of course the double cameo in the final shot - b...

On one level, this advertisement from Disney isn't that  special. I remember going to Disney way back in the late 80s and getting some custom-made plastic gewgaw that I promptly threw in the bottom of the old toy bin as soon as we returned home. I also had mugs with my dogs face on it and I'm sure everyone has given at least one 'Build-A-Bear' stuffed animal or engraved knickknack from "Things Remembered." However, I do think 3D printing offers up something new. For one thing, the 11 year old version of me would have gone insane for this kind of thing. Just in the interest of honesty, that needs to be said. But I also know that the possibilities of this technology would have been just as compelling. With a little tinkering, you could imagine actual action figures with a real person's face on them or stuff animals with stylized rendering of a real pet. I'm not sure everyone would want this, but you have to imagine there would be some kind of market f...

This is my first chance to respond to the big news on the internets today: JJ Abrams signing on to direct the first Star Wars sequel (of the original trilogy). I have to say, my reaction is basically positive. 'El Maesto' of the lens flare gets mixed press but I've never seen anything by him that I out and out hated, I liked the Star Trek reboot a great deal, and even his misses like Cloverfield have a certain degree of puzzle-box charm. But then, as is probably apparent from a brief check of my current watching habits, Star Wars isn't something I get super worked up about. Don't get me wrong. I like Star Wars, it's a big part of my childhood but I've always been on the fence about what the show is about  really. The idea of Luke Skywalker as a timeless expression of the monohero, the duality of good and evil, wookies, it all works a lot better with a healthy dose of sly humor: which is probably why "Empire Strikes Back" is my favorite film....