interesting things

It was a rough weekend, ladies and gentlemen, thus no post on Monday. If you were hanging around with your tongues out waiting for it -- well, I apologise and...er...don't you have something else to do with your time?

Anyway, I still don't have a lot of time to write anything thoughtful for this week, so, instead, here are some interesting things taken almost entirely at random from my "blog" bookmarks folder, Google reader list, and Tumblr blog. I figure about 70% of my memory is currently housed online...

Arbogast on Film reviews Population 436 which I reviewed on here a few months back and comes to basically the same conclusions I did which is kind of awesome.

Tor.com is doing Zombie Week.

Shane Perez takes brilliant photos of abandoned or "not currently in use" environments. Beware: some of the series do feature a naked model, so may be NSFW.

It's the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain and the RAF Benevolent Fund has set up a website detailing the events of the Battle through "blog entries" from eyewitnesses. The eyewitnesses are fictional, but their experiences are real and this is just a jimdandy use of primary source material -- photographs, diaries, footage (footage yet! some it's color!), newspaper stories -- to create a new kind of narrative about an event.

And here's a slightly different way to look at the sky: some shots from the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2010 competition.

Some free fiction from the Living Dead 2 collection, edited by John Joseph Adams: a story by David Wellington, one of my favorite authors, and eight other stories to whet your appetite for the full collection.

The Guardian interviews John Simm. Worth clicking through for the photo alone. Chippy or not, Mr. Simm, sir, we love you.

Finally, a list from the SciFi Wire: (some of the) best sci-fi episodes ever aired.

Photo by Nick Deaves

the endless joy of lists

So there I was sitting on my couch on Wednesday afternoon, trying to come up with a list of 20 horror movies in response to the prompt over at Final Girl.

I pull out my pen -- fountain, purple ink -- and a piece of paper -- ripped out of a Moleskin; yes, I am a writing supply snob, thank you -- and started listing:

Silent Hill. Solid, no-one can argue that's horrible and use 'horrible' in any way you like. Personally, I like it, but that might have a lot to do with the fact that I'll follow Radha Mitchell and Sean Bean just about anywhere to say nothing of Laurie Holden as the eye-candy cop. And I like the fact that not only is the protagonist female, but the antagonist is, too. And, lordy, there isn't a lot creepier than Alice Krige when she gets rolling.

Jaws. Might be marginal, but still, I doubt anyone can argue it's at least half in the horror genre.

Pitch Black. Now I start to wonder: horror? sci-fi? thriller? action? Well... Yes. It does all those things. Every box ticked, I'd say. It's got undeniable horror elements (situation you can't get out of; unreliable partners; unknown/uncombatable opponents); sci-fi (space-ship; aliens); thriller (darkness; time-linked challenge); action (I'm not even listing anything here!)

28 Days Later. Okay, I'm off the thin ice now. Zombies, infection, brain-munching, lots and lots of blood -- this is horror.

Alien vs. Predator. Still firm, I feel. Cheesy, but firm.

Resident: Evil. Ditto. And how can you resist Alice's one-liners? "I'm missing you already." Love it!

Day of the Triffids (1962). I feel unsteady again. IMDB.com, interestingly, has it listed, under its "Genre" tab as both "horror" and "sci-fi." I've always felt personally that it verges more onto the sci-fi end of things, but there's no doubt that it has a lot of horror elements -- the couple locked in the lighthouse; the implacable enemy you can't escape who kills you and then eats you; the blindness epidemic -- it's got a lot of boxes ticked here. And Carole Ann Ford who was one of the first companions on Doctor Who -- in fact, the very first given that she was the Doctor's granddaughter -- is in it.

From Hell. Firm again! Yeah, I know Johnny Depp's accent comes from no known location and it's really only loosely tied to the events it claims to portray, but I love the movie anyway.

Sleepy Hollow. Another bizarre accent from Mr. Depp, but this is Tim Burton being bloody and creepy and weird all at once -- three things he does very well and doesn't really go for again until Sweeney Todd unless I'm totally out of my reckoning. And there's Ian McDiarmid. How can I not have this movie on here? But -- horror? Ye-ee-es...I guess? Maybe? There is a pretty convincing "can't kill the boogeyman" bad guy in the shape of the Horseman; there's Depp's whole weird flashback childhood with his mom and the iron maiden; Miranda Richardson;...I think there's enough here to justify inclusion, yes?

The Thing. No explanation necessary.

The Orphanage (El Orfeneo). Weird-ass Spanish movie. I think it can carry itself on weirdness alone. And when my father watched it, he offered all sorts of analogies to Psycho, the great horror classic of all time, so I think that's sufficient, don't you? Yes.

Underworld. I'm shoehorning this one here because I adore it and its two sequels. I love Kate Beckinsale in latex; I love Scott Speedman; I love Bill Nighy (have I ever mentioned this was the first movie I ever saw him in?); I love Michael Sheen. The whole thing, really. But -- is it horror? Vampires? Those would seem pretty horrific. Werewolves? Well, if Teenage Werewolf in London and I Was a Teenage Werewolf (oh, god help you, Michael Landon) count, then, yes, weres are horrific. There's a lot of blood, plenty of rending, lots of skin-shifting...plus the dude who played Kraven chewing the scenery. Oh, and Sophia Myles.

The Faculty. God, I love this movie. It is such campy crap and it never really takes itself seriously and it's just a great "high school is hell" movie. Horror? Oh, yes, thank you. We're on nice solid ice here.

The Craft. Okay, I'm elbowing this one a bit, too. It isn't quite horror -- I don't think...? -- and I don't honestly love it, but it is pretty fun if you have some popcorn (some to eat; some to throw at the screen) and a moderately good sense of humor.

So that's 14 -- and there I stick. By the time this post goes live on Friday morning, perhaps I will have solved my dilemma -- but I have also created a new one. I would like to add things like The Proposition and Ninth Gate -- but are those legitimately "horror" films? In the case of The Proposition -- indubitably not. It wasn't made as one; it isn't filmed as one; it doesn't sound like one; and it really doesn't have any of the tags of one -- but the violence, the motivations of some of the characters, what happens to some of the characters -- unarguably horrific on any level, by any standard.

I watch Predator to soothe myself to sleep when I'm sick; I have to feel able to run a marathon in order to sit down and watch The Proposition.

I think there's a larger point to be made in here about the spectrum of horror: there's the really damn obvious alien bursting out of your chest (ooh! ooh! ALIEN! I forgot ALIEN!) kind, all sorts of things in between, and then the less obvious interpersonal kind which can be much worse. But, by that token, does Notes on a Scandal count as a horror movie? Not really -- I mean, yeah, Judi Dench's character is pretty messed-up, but she's not about to grab a kitchen knife and start carving her way out through the schoolkids. But, taken a step or two further and slightly to the left -- and she's not far off a Bette Davis/Joan Crawford-style psycho poisoning the neighbor's cats or introducing the local kids to Satanic worship with their hopscotch chalk.

And what's scarier, really: the alien embryo or the policeman who's willing to take a horsewhip to a 15-year-old boy?

"A little water never hurt anyone!"

Good god, it's wet. Boston is damp today. Very very wet, in fact.

Anyway, skinny post today, folks -- if you want more, I suggest you check out my Tumblr blog. I'm wading through Google Reader feed backlog, calling some folks about jobs, and generally doing not very much. Oh, and getting through a few more chapters of Tony Judt's Postwar -- excellent book, but very tiny font -- tough reading.

In any case, I can't just leave nothing up on a Wednesday -- especially not a thunderstormy Wednesday -- so I went to find amusing things on Youtube.

So I started with the idea of finding a Clangers short from Oliver Postgate which I have done -- it's right down there -- but there was also a link to a Bagpuss short. Now I've only ever heard about Bagpuss and The Wombles which were Postgate's other two really successful creations and mostly heard about them through things like Alice on Vicar of Dibley or Brendan Gleeson's wonderful/insane turn in Breakfast on Pluto.

This is trippy. This may be the trippiest thing I will see all day -- and I want more of it. I want lots more of it:

And then there are the Clangers who are also trippy and deeply so, but which I am more familiar with. Don't blame me if you start to whistle after watching this:

I was talking with a friend of mine about books the other week and we were comparing reading lists for the next few weeks -- or months or, possibly, years -- and one of my entries was China Mieville's Kraken which I explained I was reading as slowly as possible because I have this habit of driving straight through his books and then realising, 'Oh, crap. Now I'm done and he won't write another book for four years. Crap.'

And then I started thinking about how many other books I have by authors that I always say I love that are tucked away in spare corners or starred on reading lists and have been like that for quite some time now. There's Connie Willis' Doomsday Book -- found on the Brattle Books $1 cart and now sitting quietly on my desk with a business card as a bookmark about 100 pages in. And it's been like that for a few weeks. There's Mieville's King Rat -- sitting on the bookshelf next to Iron Council, The Scar, and Perdido Street Station (all of which I have read, thank you very much, more than once) -- which I started sometime last fall, loved -- but never finished. David Wellington's 23 Hours, the latest Laura Caxton vampire mystery -- up on the shelf. Got through about four chapters of that and bogged. Neal Stephenson's System of the World -- got about half-way through that one, then stuck nice and fast, just like Root in the mud around Cambridge. The top example of all this? Kage Baker's No Less Than Gods which I lucked into at the Brookline Public Library and haven't even opened.

And I can't explain why I haven't picked up any of these and gone through them in a matter of hours. I liked them all, very much, enough to pay out money for copies -- which I never then touch. With the Stephenson, you could make a good argument that it's to do with length or complexity, were it not for the fact that I also own and have read several times Quicksilver, The Confusion, and Anathem. Not to mention Diamond Age and Snow Crash -- both of which are substantially shorter but no less complex. Stephenson makes no real concession to ignorance on the part of the reader or length of the work; he's gonna go as fast as he's gonna go and you'd really better just learn to keep up.

So what is it that keeps me from making the pot of tea and going to town? Well, partly it's a desire not to admit that the fun is over: if I read No Less Than Gods, I'll have to admit that there's only one other new Baker I'll get a chance to read ever. And I'm pretty sure the other one is set in her fantasy world -- which I love! -- but which isn't a Company novel. No more Mendoza; no more Lewis; no more Joseph. Who wants to admit something like that?! If I go ahead and work my way through System of the World, sure, there might be a great happy ending -- but there's be no more travelling with Jack; no more watching Eliza outsmart French nobility; no more rooting for Daniel to struggle his way successfully through the complexities of other people's lives.

You can always go back and reread -- Lord knows I have and I do -- but it's never quite the same as the first discovery when you're still trying to figure it out one jump ahead of the storyteller and you're so proud when you do but then you have to try to keep one jump ahead -- and ooh, look! a new character -- he seems kinda cool but maybe not -- and maybe -- hey! we knew he was a bad guy all along! damn it -- we never trusted him! But no, wait a minute, wait a minute, maybe he's just being used by -- aha! the real bad guy! we knew it!

That's never going to be as much fun the second time around. 

On the other hand, it isn't as if there isn't fun stuff to find after that -- I only figured out most of the subtext of Kage Baker's Anvil of the World when I read it the third time around; the first two times, I was having too much fun with the semi-demonic sorcerous lordling, the assassin-turned-hotel-owner, and the free-spirit-turned-hotel-chef. Similarly, the subplot of Neil Gaiman's Study in Emerald totally slipped by me until I hit the end and went, "Wait a mi---" and swore a lot and then read it again.  

So, on the third hand, if you don't read, you don't find out. And I like to think that what I'm actually doing is waiting for the right moment; one day, I will sit down, and my hand will fall on my copy of The City & The City and I will think, "Yes, absolutely." And it will be great.

Now all I have to do is dodge spoilers until then.

friday fun times

my suggestion with this particular youtubery is to hit play and go do something else. don't walk out of earshot or anything, but the graphics have no particular relevance here.

"and...we're back in the car again."

So what did I do over my month off? Well, I did lots of things and I will tell you about some of them.

For example, I finished the 3rd season of Bones (WTF?!); I watched the fourth Jaws sequel (kinda wish I hadn't); I read a history of the Paris flood of 1910 (great stuff); I got mugged by the IDW omnibus of volume 3 of Locke & Key; I dodged a ton of spoilers about the 5th season of Doctor Who; and I'm anxiously awaiting arrival of my copy of the Torchwood graphic novel, Rift War -- how could I resist something written by John Barrowman? That's just too much for any one fan-girl to walk away from!

I also worked a lot of hours, applied for quite a few jobs, had one interview, re-learned some high-school math and, as far as employment goes, am right back where I started at the end of July. But I did try; my mom would say that counts. I'm not entirely convinced.

So what's the upshot of all this? I watched some interesting things; read some other interesting things; and I'll see if I can glue together a few sentences to talk about them.