Edward Gorey

"More is happening out there than we are aware of. It is possibly due to some unknown direful circumstance.” 
-Edward Gorey

Movie Review: The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug (or, "The Hobbit: Hope You Like Decapitations")

So...The Hobbit, part 2. I didn't really like The Hobbit, part 1. I though it was boring and slow and really dark and violent. But it did look cool, and that matters to me in a 3-hour movie. I would have rather watched these movies than 3 hours of, say, ESPN. But that's a pretty low bar.

Still, The Hobbit 2 was much better than the first movie. They put a lot more interesting things in this one and it has a lot better set pieces. Locations were great, and there were some actual entertaining sequences, most notably the barrel river escape sequence. That was really well done.

But this one is still really dark and violent. It's been about 25 years since I last read The Hobbit but I remember it being about 90% to do with Gollum in the mountain and there was a part with trolls and MAYBE there was a dragon in there towards the end somewhere, and that was about it. I don't remember it crawling with horrifying orcs and spiders and having the Hobbits decapitate most of them in really explicit detail. Why can't movies just be light and fun anymore?

Plus, it's the 2nd movie-we really need to start killing off dwarves. I know I just said the movie should be lighter and now I'm calling for killing at least half of the cast, but they really don't serve any point anymore and they don't have distinctive personalities, really. Have half of them be eaten by the dragon, maybe. That would be fun.

I really think they were created so that their names would sound funny when Gandolf read them all out. It's like 'Dwarlin, Marlin, Tweeby, Feeby, Deeby, Oin, Gro'in, Flo'in, Ziddy, Fiddy, Biddy, Burry, Surry, Tarlin, Farlin, and our leader, Thorin Oakenshield."

So go and see it, sure. There's nothing else out, and it's clean other than for the NC-17 - rated violence. If you're looking for the Desolation of Smaug, however, look elsewhere. This movie is more like 'the two and a half hours of dwarves getting captured by everyone in middle earth, and the exploration of the boring lives of minor side characters, and then the monologue of Smaug.' There's no desolation. That appears to be held off for the last movie, which I assume is called "The Hobbit and the Dragon Whose Named is Pronounced Differently by Everyone in the Movie."

Book Review: Tyrannosaur Canyon, by Douglas Preston

I guess Douglas Preston has become my new Michael Crichton. Ever since MC passed away, the literary world has really lacked for a very entertaining, interesting author. DP in my opinion doesn't have as unique of a voice as MC, and he sorely lacks for humor, but he writes very cinematic-like movies; ones that you can very easily see being turned into movies, though so far I don't think any of them actually have. But they're clean and they're fun and they make for a good read.

Preston reminds me of Crichton because he, like MC, extensively researches his books. This book has a great deal of scientific information in it, and you can tell in parts where the military is speaking or lab techs are speaking that the jargon they're using and processes they're describing are accurate. That helps the books feel somewhat more realistic.

Tyrannosaur Canyon was, to me, a lot stronger than Cabinet of Curiosities. The story is more straightforward and it had some decent twists. I won't give away anything because the main crux of the story doesn't really get revealed until about 40% of the way through the book. But basically it's the story of a treasure hunter who gets murdered at the beginning of the book; a man finds him and, before he dies, he gives the man a notebook containing a highly encrypted code, and asks him to get it to his estranged daughter. The story is about staying away from the murderer, trying to find this daughter, trying to identify the treasure hunter, and trying to find his treasure.

The book is really well-paced. But, like Cabinet of Curiosities, there's not really a single laugh in the entire thing. Humor can go a long way in books like this, and this could have really used a lighter touch here and there. And although I liked the ending, I thought the location of the entire last 20% of the book was one of the least interesting locations the author could have picked. It's even more frustrating because the location just PRIOR to the whole ending location is a cool spooky abandoned gold mine. Why not hang out in there?

Still, good characters, a good story, decent twists, and clean dialogue and situations for the most part entirely throughout made this a recommended read.

Movie Review: Frozen

With just an hour and a half left to go in 2013 here on the east coast, I thought I'd get one last blog post in.

Having two little girls in the house that love to sing and dance around (allegedly they're related to me), we knew that Frozen would be a likely 'must see.' And so far, we've taken our oldest to it three times (though only once in 3d, aka 'the real version').

Frozen is a Hans Christian Anderson story - I think the original is called "The Snow Queen" or the "Ice Queen" or something along those lines. Basically, it's about two sisters in Norway or somewhere thereabouts. One of them has magic ice powers and they get out of control. The other must try to reach her and get her to somehow undo all of the freezing she's accidentally done.

The main sister, Elsa, fortunately doesn't suffer from having a personality outside of being angry, fearful, and then eventually empowered and sashaying around in a snowy evening gown thing. The younger sister, Anna, got engaged to a guy she's only known for one day. You're supposed to root for her even though she's insanely shallow. (Song lyric she sings: "I see your face, and it's nothin' like I've even known befooooorrreee!)

The dark horse love interest is a guy named Kristoff who would be cool except that he talks to his reindeer in a doofy voice and he was raised by some cutesy trolls who seem like they belong in a different movie. On the plus side, almost every song is really good and very catchy, so you won't mind going to it again. And again. And yet another time. And more.

As parents, it's definitely tolerable. The comic relief - the snowman Olaf - isn't as annoying as he seems like he'll be, though at least 1/5th of the time you do wish he would fall into a geyser. And sometimes he's actually funny. The graphics are cool, and the 3d effects are very subtle and add a lot of great depth. If you're wary of 3d, spring for it on this because it won't turn you upside down like Gravity or anything like that.

In closing, I'd just like to say that the ice castle that Elsa magically builds for herself on top of a distant mountain is very pretty but has no bedrooms, furniture, heating, insulation, kitchen, or bathrooms, and that without any kind of food or water, she'll very likely have starved or froze to death within a matter of hours had the movie taken a more realistic turn.

Happy 2014!

President Joseph Smith, Jr.

"It is my meditation all the day, and more than my meat and drink, to know how I shall make the Saints of God comprehend the visions that roll like an overflowing surge before my mind."

-President Joseph Smith, Jr.

Book Review: Titan, by John Varley

Hoo boy.

Well, OK. So I have no idea how I came to be recommended to read this book. I thought it was from a blog that I regularly read, but I checked it and there's no sign of this. But someone said it was like a 'landmark' sci fi classic on par with Contact or 2001 or something, (both of which I read and neither of which I liked, so who knows even then what I was thinking) and I was interested enough to put it on my Amazon wish list for like 2 years.

Finally I found it at my local library. Not on audio CD, unfortunately, which meant I had to read it the old fashioned way. I found it...well...

OK so there's a ship called the something or other (it's been about 4 days since I finished it and the details are already gone). It's going to Neptune or Saturn or something to study one of its moons, Titan. Within about 3 pages the author establishes that the entire crew is romantically involved with each other, and that two Japanese sisters are in an incest relationship and that 'civilization has evolved to accept this.' I probably should have stopped there, but when the ship got attacked by a giant tentacle space monster that eats everyone for a year and then poops them up through the ground into a giant spaceship world thing with grass and air and sky and strange creatures, I was roped back.

Just when I thought I was out...

Anyhoo, half the crew is missing and the remaining people who survived, the ship ate 'all their hair' and 'all their clothes' and turned them all into lesbians.

I'd like to take a moment to pause here and note that per the book's dust jacket, Tom Clancy calls John Varley 'the best writer in America.' 

Meanwhile, on the ship planet thing, which they name...something like Gaea or something. Yeah, that sounds right. ...meanwhile on that, they meet some giant blimp aliens who fly around, and they meet some other weird aliens, and everyone's apparently naked and hairless. 

Many hundreds of pages pass. Some of the crew can talk to the aliens. Others wonder why they're all lesbians now apparently. They eventually meet some centaurs, who the author takes extra care to describe in full anatomical detail. He's really concerned that you will forget about what biological traits differentiate men and women in this universe of stupid.

Blah blah blah they do some other stuff and it gets even weirder, if that's even possible. They get to the end and it's actually somewhat satisfying, even though the previous billion pages were extremely bizarre and boring and nothing happened. 

If they ever make this into a movie it will cost about $750 billion dollars, will be rated X, and about 3 people will want to see it. So obviously Hollywood will probably try.

So why did I keep on reading? The weirdness factor and the fact that the author of the book that would get turned into my all-time favorite movie (Red October) seemed to think that this author was as good as it got in America definitely played a factor. But now I realize that Tom Clancy recently passed away and this quote was likely received via quack psychic post-mortem for a special December 2013 reprint of Titan, and was badly garbled in translation. I assume what he meant to say was, "John Varley has some very strange issues he needs to work out, and his books are great if you are a pervert and/or insane."

That said...two thumbs up. 

Just kidding. 

No thumbs up, and an index finger sideways, pointing you in the direction you should run when someone asks you if you'd be interested in reading Titan. I mean, it wasn't poorly written, I guess. To say something nice about it. It was capably written and, uh, imaginative, I guess. But seriously, if this is what is takes to be considered America's best author, then literally everyone on the planet should be able to write classic sci fi. This was straight-up Gentlemen Broncos-level.