Ten programmes we gave up on before the end

Ten programmes we (Mr and Mrs Theaker) gave up on before the end:

1. Heroes
2. Sliders
3. Earth: Final Conflict
4. Andromeda
5. Xena: Warrior Princess
6. Red Dwarf
7. Bugs
8. Star Trek: Deep Space 9
9. Smallville
10. V (2009)

Wednesday is list day. This is list #5.

The Conjuring, reviewed by Douglas J. Ogurek

Scare Magician Wan Conjures Up another Haunted House Hit

Just before The Conjuring started, my wife said, “I dropped my wedding ring.” When the theater darkened, we still hadn’t found it. We decided to resume our search after the film. Unknowingly, we also challenged director James Wan (and writers Chad and Carey Hayes) to take our minds off our dilemma for a couple hours by cranking up the scares, like Insidious did.

In the early seventies, renowned demonologist/paranormal research duo Ed and Lorraine Warren confront their most frightening case. It starts when the financially strapped Perron couple and their daughters move into an old Rhode Island house. True to the haunted house formula, creepy things – Wan’s forté – start to happen. Carolyn Perron (Lili Taylor of The Haunting) reaches out to the Warrens.

Insidious lead Patrick Wilson plays Ed, a refreshingly levelheaded ghost hunter who wants to heed his clairvoyant wife’s desire to help the Warrens, but also prevent her from slipping into madness. By steering clear of the “creepy eccentric” and “lovable goofball” ghost hunter tropes, Wilson adds believability to the story.

The Warrens pepper the Perron house with Catholic icons and ghost hunting paraphernalia to expose the intruders. Then it’s more of the typical haunted house fare: the house’s violent history unravels, dark entities get angrier, and characters grow more desperate. As with Insidious, Wan takes the finale a bit far, but we can forgive him. Haunted house film fans aren’t looking for a life-changing cinematic experience. Rather, they’re looking for the same thing that a good roller coaster delivers: thrills and chills. The Conjuring doesn’t disappoint.

I frequent a local restaurant. The meal is enjoyable, but it’s that iced tea that keeps me coming back. A James Wan haunted house film is a lot like that. The characters aren’t highly memorable and the storyline sometimes flirts with the ridiculous, but they do their job. What keeps me coming back to these films – Wan’s iced tea, so to speak – are the “scary man in the closet” scenes, which The Conjuring pours on. The film uses traditional, but by no means ineffective, scare strategies – mirrors, doors, wardrobes, dolls, basements – ranging from slasher film pop-outs to more chilling techniques that lead the viewer to wonder, “What’s in/behind/under/through there?” One memorable scene ratchets up the tension with a blindfolded version of hide-and-go-seek that requires those hiding to occasionally clap to indicate their location (though the preview spoiled this one a bit for me). Another scare tactic shows one sister able to see a dark entity, while another sister (and the audience) cannot.

It turns out that Wan did divert my wife and me from our missing ring, and that says something about The Conjuring. Fortunately, we found the ring after the film. And we do look forward to the next wave of the “magic Wan”.—Douglas J. Ogurek

Ten programmes we watched from the beginning to the very end

Ten programmes we (Mr and Mrs Theaker) watched from the beginning to the very end:

1. Babylon 5
2. The X-Files
3. Star Trek: Enterprise
4. Fringe
5. Alias
6. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
7. Battlestar Galactica (2004)
8. Firefly
9. Dollhouse
10. Highlander

Wednesday is list day. This is list #4.

Fifteen albums I bought without hearing a single song by that artist, and whether I like them now

Fifteen albums I bought without hearing a single song by that artist, and whether I like them now:

1. Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, M83 (yes)
2. Digital Dump, The Jackofficers (no)
3. Volume Two, Echoboy (no)
4. Surfing on Sine Waves, Polygon Window (yes)
5. Compilations 1995-2002, Hood (no)
6. This Is the Day, This Is the Hour, This Is This! Pop Will Eat Itself (yes)
7. Possessed, The Balanescu Quartet (yes)
8. Alpha Centauri, Tangerine Dream (yes)
9. Unreleased? Fire! with Jim O'Rourke (yes)
10. 69 Love Songs, The Magnetic Fields (yes)
11. Decade, Neil Young (yes)
12. Avant Hard, Add N to (X) (yes)
13. Endtroducing, DJ Shadow (yes)
14. You Make Me Real, Brandt Brauer Brick (yes)
15. The Noise Made By People, Broadcast (yes)

Wednesday is list day! This is list #3.

World War Z, reviewed by Douglas J. Ogurek

Zombies storm the box office, again. Last winter, romantic zomedy Warm Bodies reached number one at the box office. This summer, a different breed of zombie film clambered its way to the top.

Something threatens the fate of the world. Cities burn. Monuments crumble. In government control rooms, dumbed down charts and maps glow with death tolls and devastated regions. One man will make a difference. We’ve seen it with weather. We’ve seen it with disease. We’ve seen it with aliens. We’ve seen it with robots. But we haven’t seen such worldwide chaos with zombies. And, we haven’t seen it with Brad Pitt. Until World War Z (directed by Marc Forster). Or perhaps a more fitting title would be World War GQ.

Embraced by the general public and endured by critics, WWZ combines a more intense manifestation of the “fast zombies” popularized by 28 Days Later (2002) with the big budget action of War of the Worlds (2005).

The inciting scene relies on the “things go haywire while protagonist sits in traffic” cliché. Nevertheless, WWZ pulls it off. Cars crash. People scream and scramble. The camera cuts. Who’s human? Who’s zombie? Thus the viewer plunges into two hours of suspense, chases, attacks, and fashionable hair and scarves.

Gerry Lane (Pitt) has dropped his UN special ops gig to flip pancakes for his forgettable wife and daughters. As zombie attacks escalate, military leaders pressure Lane into accompanying a young doctor and a group of GIs on a mission to find a way to stop them.

Though Pitt’s practised calm seems a bit unlikely as zombies rip into their victims, he does manage to avoid the exaggerated cool that would have mauled the film with a less competent actor. Would a more ordinary protagonist work just as well? Perhaps an average-looking accountant instead of a GQ cover boy special agent? Maybe. Or how about another actor? Tom Cruise, Will Smith, or any big budget barnstormer could have pulled it off. But casting Pitt makes good economic sense, mainly because we haven’t seen him in this type of movie. Also, Cruise and Smith can’t pull off a scarf like that.

Pitt proves his versatility. He does the sociopath (Kalifornia (1993)). He does the rebellious youth (A River Runs Through It (1992)). He does the lunatic (Twelve Monkeys (1995)). And now, Pitt does the action hero.

Enough about acting. WWZ isn’t really about acting. It’s about evading a brutal death and dealing with the zombie problem. “Nature is a serial killer.” So says the part charming, part annoying doctor who is passionate about finding a solution to the pandemic. Thus, the film, like 28 Days Later, gives the zombie infestation a semi-scientific bent, and offers a plausible resolution.

WWZ also ups the ante on collective zombie terror with its ant colony-like portrayal of group attacks. Note how zombies pile on top of one another to reach new heights.

The film does not confine its scenes to large-scale urban attacks. For instance, in one scene Lane and comrades ride bicycles down a dark, rainy alley where zombies may just be lurking. And the climactic scene strays from the familiar explosions and gunfire by entering the quiet halls of a zombie-infested laboratory.

I harbored delusions that WWZ would be a testimony about technology’s potential to tear apart the nuclear family. There are no hidden themes in this film. The protagonist’s and antagonists’ objectives are as straightforward as those in a Scooby Doo episode. And despite some critics’ complaints about underdeveloped characters and generic scenes, WWZ entertains. Isn’t that why people see movies?

Do expect a sequel; what draws more people to the box office than the threat of their annihilation? – Douglas J. Ogurek

Ten actors who might have played Dr Who on film had Peter Cushing regenerated

Ten actors who might have played Dr Who on film had Peter Cushing regenerated:

2. Peter Sellers
3. Jane Fonda
4. Sean Connery
5. Sigourney Weaver
6. Gary Oldman
7. Morgan Freeman
8. Ewan MacGregor
9. Johnny Depp
10. Michael Sheen
11. Gael Garcia Bernal

Wednesday is list day. This is list #2.

What contributors did next #3

John Greenwood, TQF co-editor, has begun to submit stories elsewhere. "Consumer Testing" appears in Bourbon Penn #7 and "Didcotts" appears in the forthcoming Rustblind and Silverbright, edited by David Rix and published by Eibonvale Press.

Bruce Hesselbach, who all the way back in 2007 contributed three stories to our magazine, has a new steampunk novel out from Cogwheel Press, Perpetual Motion.

The Not Yet by Moira Crone, which I reviewed for Interzone #240, reached the shortlist of the Philip K. Dick Award. Very interesting novel, well worth a look.

I have a review of Jad Smith's book John Brunner in Interzone #245, and the new Interzone #247 includes my review of Shadows of the New Sun: Stories in Honor of Gene Wolfe.

David Tallerman has a second Easie Damasco novel out, Crown Thief, with Prince Thief due this October.

Douglas Thompson has published Entanglement via Elsewhen Press.

While I'm here, apologies for the quietness on the blog this past month. I've been reading TQF cover artist Howard Watts' as yet unpublished (and very good) novel Master of Clouds and submissions for our next issue, so I haven't read much for review, while work and other responsibilities have kept me from blogging. But new reviews and a new issue are coming soon, so hang in there!

Ten albums I bought as presents that I was chuffed to get via Amazon Auto-Rip

Ten albums I bought as presents for other people that I was chuffed to get an MP3 copy of via Amazon Auto-Rip:

1. 5:55, Charlotte Gainsbourg
2. Fever Ray, Fever Ray
3. Has Been, William Shatner
4. Mr. Machine, The Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble
5. Oracular Spectacular, MGMT
6. Room on Fire, The Strokes
7. Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Various Artists
8. Total Life Forever, Foals
9. Witchazel, Matt Berry
10. You've Stolen My Heart, Kronos Quartet and Asha Bhosle

Wednesday is now list day on this blog! This is list #1.

Randalls Round by Eleanor Scott, reviewed by Harsh Grewal

Randalls Round (Oleander Press, pb, 176pp) collects several well-written tales of horror and suspense. They were written by Helen M. Leys, under the pseudonym Eleanor Scott. They were first published over eighty years ago and feature highly articulate posh people being scared – or worse. The stories were apparently inspired by the author’s dreams, though one suspects the sexual aspects of the dreams have been somewhat diluted.

The author isn’t as fascinatingly keyed-up as Poe, nor as brilliantly off her rocker as Lovecraft, and there is generally little to distinguish her from other writers in the genre, but the last two tales, with female protagonists, are interesting. Honor Yorke and Annis Breck are smart and cool, shrewd, with a dislike of girls who get giddy and terrified and scream for help. It’s a shame there isn’t more like this here from an author who was herself an emancipated Oxford woman.

British Fantasy Awards 2013: the nominees!

I'm back running the British Fantasy Awards this year, and the nominees have just been announced:

Best Fantasy Novel (the Robert Holdstock Award)
Blood and Feathers, Lou Morgan (Solaris)
The Brides of Rollrock Island, Margo Lanagan (David Fickling Books)
Railsea, China Miéville (Macmillan)
Red Country, Joe Abercrombie (Gollancz)
Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Graham Joyce (Gollancz)

Best Horror Novel (the August Derleth Award)
The Drowning Girl, Caitlin R. Kiernan (Roc)
The Kind Folk, Ramsey Campbell (PS Publishing)
Last Days, Adam Nevill (Macmillan)
Silent Voices, Gary McMahon (Solaris)
Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Graham Joyce (Gollancz)

Best Novella
Curaré, Michael Moorcock (Zenith Lives!) (Obverse Books)
Eyepennies, Mike O’Driscoll (TTA Press)
The Nine Deaths of Dr Valentine, John Llewellyn Probert (Spectral Press)
The Respectable Face of Tyranny, Gary Fry (Spectral Press)

Best Short Story
Our Island, Ralph Robert Moore (Where Are We Going?) (Eibonvale Press)
Shark! Shark! Ray Cluley (Black Static #29) (TTA Press)
Sunshine, Nina Allan (Black Static #29) (TTA Press)
Wish for a Gun, Sam Sykes (A Town Called Pandemonium) (Jurassic London)

Best Collection
From Hell to Eternity, Thana Niveau (Gray Friar Press)
Remember Why You Fear Me, Robert Shearman (ChiZine Publications)
Where Furnaces Burn, Joel Lane (PS Publishing)
The Woman Who Married a Cloud, Jonathan Carroll (Subterannean Press)

Best Anthology
A Town Called Pandemonium, Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin (eds) (Jurassic London)
Magic: an Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane, Jonathan Oliver (ed.) (Solaris)
The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women, Marie O’Regan (ed.) (Robinson)
Terror Tales of the Cotswolds, Paul Finch (ed.) (Gray Friar Press)

Best Small Press (the PS Publishing Independent Press Award)
ChiZine Publications (Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi)
Gray Friar Press (Gary Fry)
Spectral Press (Simon Marshall-Jones)
TTA Press (Andy Cox)

Best Non-Fiction
Ansible, David Langford
The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (eds) (Cambridge University Press)
Coffinmaker’s Blues, Stephen Volk (Black Static) (TTA Press)
Fantasy Faction, Marc Aplin (ed.)
Pornokitsch, Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin (eds)
Reflections: On the Magic of Writing, Diana Wynne Jones (David Fickling Books)

Best Magazine/Periodical
Black Static, Andy Cox (ed.) (TTA Press)
Interzone, Andy Cox (ed.) (TTA Press)
SFX, David Bradley (ed.) (Future Publishing)
Shadows and Tall Trees, Michael Kelly (ed.) (Undertow Publications)

Best Artist
Ben Baldwin
David Rix
Les Edwards
Sean Phillips
Vincent Chong

Best Comic/Graphic Novel
Dial H, China Miéville, Mateus Santolouco, David Lapham and Riccardo Burchielli (DC Comics)
Saga, Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
The Unwritten, Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Gary Erskine, Gabriel Hernández Walta, M.K. Perker, Vince Locke and Rufus Dayglo (DC Comics/Vertigo)
The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard (Skybound Entertainment/Image Comics)

Best Screenplay
Avengers Assemble, Joss Whedon
Sightseers, Alice Lowe, Steve Oram and Amy Jump
The Cabin in the Woods, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro

Best Newcomer (the Sydney J. Bounds Award)
Alison Moore, for The Lighthouse (Salt Publishing)
Anne Lyle, for The Alchemist of Souls (Angry Robot)
E.C. Myers, for Fair Coin (Pyr)
Helen Marshall, for Hair Side, Flesh Side (ChiZine Publications)
Kim Curran, for Shift (Strange Chemistry)
Lou Morgan, for Blood and Feathers (Solaris)
Molly Tanzer, for A Pretty Mouth (Lazy Fascist Press)
Saladin Ahmed, for Throne of the Crescent Moon (Gollancz)
Stephen Bacon, for Peel Back the Sky (Gray Friar Press)
Stephen Blackmoore, for City of the Lost (Daw Books)

Thanks to everyone who voted and all the jury members. The winners will be announced at the Fantasy Awards banquet at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton on Sunday, November 3, 2013.

UPDATE: If any nominees would now like to attend WFC, the banquet, or even just the awards ceremony, a small number of places have been reserved for a limited period of time. Email me via bfsawards@britishfantasysociety.org for details. Information about the convention here: http://www.wfc2013.org, and about the awards banquet here: http://www.wfc2013.org/banquet01.html.

Double Feature: Rise of the Guardians and Hotel Transylvania, reviewed by Jacob Edwards

Double Feature: Rise of the Guardians / Hotel Transylvania. Accentuate the positives. Whether from the last, clutching vestiges of British Empire, the nearer, star-strangling embrace of Uncle Sam, or merely the white-capped tyranny of distance, Australian accents seem particularly susceptible to being subverted and then cinematically or televisually remodelled. House’s Jesse Spencer just about held his own as Chase (although, given that producer Bryan Singer didn’t realise at first that Hugh Laurie wasn’t American, the “Australian-ness” of Spencer’s character equally could have been recognised only after the fact, and so necessarily made more subtle than the quintessential Ozzie Norm), but for the most part there have been only Rolf Harris and Crocodile Dundee-styled tyre marks to follow, and so Australian personas have tended to be about as true to life when depicted abroad as are the on-screen dead-pigs-in-pokes that seems to constitute your average writer/producer/director’s conception of an intellect-defining game of chess… Brisbanite Janet Fielding, for instance, drawling the short straw as Tegan Jovanka in Doctor Who (Seasons 18.7 through 21.4); or crocodile hunter Steve Irwin as— well, okay, he really was like that; but now Hugh Jackman, his born-and-bred Australianness belied by an injection of “strewth” serum and the poor man being forced to wrap his Adam’s apple in coloured foil as a rough-as-guts Easter Bunny from Down Under.

Rise of the Guardians, directed by Peter Ramsey, tells the story of Jack Frost, the boyish and invisible (to people), at times merry, at times melancholy spirit of winter, who is chosen by the Man in the Moon to aid the four Guardians of Childhood in protecting the kids of the world from Pitch the Bogeyman’s nightmarish assault on innocence and wonder. In his pseudo-Russian depiction of Santa Claus, Alec Baldwin may perhaps be just as stereotyped as Jackman’s Bunny (though at least vodka-swigging merry, which is authentic), while Isla Fisher is unobtrusive as the Tooth Fairy, Chris Pine plays Jack Frost with a timeless, teen sincerity (and a nod or two to Peter Pan), and Sandy the Sandman (unvoiced; ergo, no actor) steals the show, communicating via a living, sparkling array of golden sand pictures. Jude Law looms unambiguously evil as the Bogeyman, and would indeed have to go hide under the bed if caught on camera, and not just microphone, giving voice to such villainous hyperbole (however so well the ipso of a Bogeyman matches the facto of his delivery); yet it is Hugh Jackman’s Myxomatosis-proof outback rabbit voice that catches in the throat – and even more so because, merely one screening away, Adam Sandler (who, let’s face it, is not generally known for his subtlety of performance) has conjured up a suave and, believe it or not, nicely understated portrayal of what could very easily have been an oh-so-over-the-top Count Dracula!

Voice acting is a tricky business – particularly where there is an exotically disemvowelled stereotype lurking in our group consciousness – and often there lies but a fine, crooked line between boorish, tongue-in-fist strangulation and a more artful, tongue-in-cheek drollery. Consider (if readers will pardon another lengthy digression) the House episode “The Socratic Method” (season 1.6), where Hugh Laurie as Doctor Gregory House, having struck up a late night epiphany playing faux Chopin, telephones a colleague for information, wakes him, and in extemporised subterfuge pretends to be calling from England. To reiterate: that’s Hugh Laurie (Cambridge educated, former president of the Footlights) playing an American who in turn is putting on a dodgy, plum-in-the-mouth Hugh Grant accent and doing so in such a way that it sounds decidedly false. David Tennant managed something similar in Doctor Who’s “Tooth and Claw” (series 2.2), his Estuary-English-speaking Time Lord contriving to greet Scotland not with Tennant’s own West Lothian accent but rather an irreverent, off-the-cuff stab at the more often parodied Edinburgh brogue – and this while warning Billie Piper’s Rose against her even more immoderate attempts at the same. From these two rare instances (contrasted with countless travesties where such motive was undercut either by means or by opportunity in abeyance) it seems possible to conclude that the extra degree of separation – a lingual dream within a dream – is vital in presenting audiences with a waggish parody rather than just the epiglottic nightmare of some accentual stereotyping run rife. A character, conventional wisdom suggests, must sound how audiences think that character should sound: hence, English actress Luan Peters’ over-the-top “Aussie trollop” accent in the Fawlty Towers episode “The Psychiatrist” (series 2.2), necessitated, lore would have it, by a dearth of Australian actresses who could “do the proper voice”; and if reality doesn’t quite measure up to those expectations… well, then reality can just grin and bear it – just ask Ridley Scott, his take on Gladiator being that many viewers would consider certain historical facts “too unbelievable” (!) and so, for the sake of remaining credible, such facts had to be thrown away, or drowned in slop and doled out soup-kitchen style to the more fickle and discerning of the masses. Enough said.

But then again, just as one may damn with faint praise, equally it is possible to praise with damnably long rants about cork-hung accents and a faintly abused sense of national identity; for though Hugh Jackman’s bunny drawl most assuredly does lower the tone of Rise of the Guardians, and while Adam Sandler conversely and most unexpectedly brings a degree of culture to Hotel Transylvania, these pretty much constitute the only bad and good points able to be raised by the respective prosecution and defence critics. Yes, Rise of the Guardians has been decried by at least one reviewer as plumping spectacle over substance,[1] and yes, Hotel Transylvania has garnered quiet praise for its less modelled, more old school animation (a homage, of sorts, to Warner Brothers great Tex Avery), but in both instances the conclusions reached are indicative of the tip, not the bulk, of the cinematic iceberg. Guardians does at times present the viewer with a visual extravaganza (beautifully realised by Roger Deakins, well known for his work on Coen brothers films, as well as How to Train Your Dragon), but this is hardly the product of whimsy or mere spectacle for its own sake (à la Walt Disney’s betwixt wars epic, Fantasia); rather, it springs with a refreshingly natural ebullience from playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s (yes, an honest-to-goodness writer for stage) having crafted a screenplay in which plot and character hold sway, but where the sensory experience is given its own space, and exists to complement, rather than distract from or stand in place of, the story.

Hotel Transylvania (directed by Genndy Tartakovsky), conversely, for all that its animation might fondly call to mind the cartoons of old, uses the relative simplicity of its visuals to mask a far-from-meritorious facileness of plot, under guise of which Robert Smigel (formerly a writer of short sketch comedy for Saturday Night Live) and Peter Baynham (who co-scripted Borat) blitz their shell-shocked viewers with cut after cut after should-have-been-cut of unremitting and largely unconnected gag humour. Hotel Transylvania tells of the eponymous getaway resort, which was built by Dracula to keep his daughter Mavis safe from human violence and prejudice, and now serves as a yearly gathering place for their extensive adopted family of unjustly villainised monster friends. With Mavis about to turn 118 years old, Dracula’s elaborate ruse to keep her from leaving home leads instead to a bohemian young backpacker’s finding his way to the hotel; and despite the clever animation of Sandler’s Dracula, and the fact that the whole caboodle comes across a bit like the old Scooby Doo cartoons (much beloved by all), objectively, what ends up on screen is a revamped take (no pun intended) on something that wasn’t all that funny to begin with, and which never was likely to translate well into feature length treatment, no matter how much Smigel and Baynham may have sat around, chortling at the innumerable one-liners they could extract from the joined scenarios of “over-protective father of ageless teen daughter” and “haven for nice monsters, suddenly threatened by exposure to humans”.

Where Rise of the Guardian focuses very much on its lead (Jack Frost), with rounded support characters (the four Guardians) and some well-measured cameos (in particular, Santa’s helpful yeti), Hotel Transylvania comes across as little more than a travelling melee, its plethora of Silly-Putty-moulded characters flinging themselves about with capricious disregard, content in the knowledge that no great diligence will be required to sight and duly tick off each signposted plot point on the rollicking road to trite. There are too many characters; too many one-off distractions; and while the casting of Adam Sandler turned out to be a masterstroke, nonetheless it seems fair to suggest that this was less the result of inspired prescience than a fortuitous by-product of an otherwise spurious conceit. Sometimes the best in animated voice characterisation comes when stars act in variance with what cinemagoers might expect to hear from them (Mel Gibson in Chicken Run, for instance), but in Hotel Transylvania the actors appear almost without exception to have been asked along not so much because their parts required any particular quality or nuance, but rather because on some primal level it was hoped that fans (or in this case, maybe just the filmmakers) would associate their voices with previous incitements of great mirth: Andy Samberg (from “Jizz in My Pants” comedy music act The Lonely Island) as Mavis’s love interest; Kevin James (The King of Queens) as Frankenstein; with David Spade (Just Shoot Me!) playing the Invisible Man; Fran Drescher (The Nanny) a werewolf; even Brian George (Seinfeld’s Babu Bhatt) as a suit of armour… in fact, of the belly-laugh-bloated and distended line-up – signed up en masse, for want of a better explanation, from a poolside Saturday Night Live reunion – the only non-comedians are Selena Gomez (but only because Hannah Montana sitcom star Miley Cyrus pulled out) and Steve Buscemi (who in any case looks, and therefore might be expected to sound, a bit funny). And so, whereas Rise of the Guardians comports itself as a serious, at times emotional film, which nevertheless embraces humour wherever possible, Hotel Transylvania instead stakes its audience’s investment solely in the undiversified (and somewhat dubious) twin funnies of rapid-fire patter and chortling through dint of osmosis.

Both movies are rated PG, and so have been designated suitable for whatever constitutes “family” viewing these days – the gist being, perhaps, that each is inherently tuned to appeal more to one side of the sophistication gap than the other. In terms of music, for instance, Rise of the Guardians makes full emotive use of a classically cinematic score by French composer Alexandre Desplat (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Parts 1 & 2), whereas much of what Mark Mothersbaugh (of Devo fame) brings to Hotel Transylvania is lost in the mayhem, and gives way eventually to a ghastly hip hop song performed in character by Sandler & Company. Perhaps tellingly of a storyline that peters out with such predictable meekness, this rendition also marks what the writers must have considered a fine end to their cleverly stitched-up narrative. (Harking back to his Monty Python days, someone like Terry Gilliam would probably have settled for a rapid-deflating, squelched raspberry sound and simply squashing the puddled plot underfoot.) Hotel Transylvania will bring joy, then – music video rapture; a celebration of angst and tunelessly progressive gusto – to the confused cygnets of Gen Z, and to those of the Gen Y ex-ducklings who now opt (with the callousness of long habit) for exaggerated emoticons and text message banality, rather than any real sense of empathy or closure; and as for the rest of us dodos (big beaked and self-important, not an Angry Bird in sight…)

…Well, we’re a dying breed, to be sure, but so long as there remain on show films the quality of Rise of the Guardians – animated features of substance, their scripts and cinematography leaving us something in which to believe – we’ll still be here, reminiscing about Jaffas and drive-in theatres and that should-have-been-Oscar-nominated bunny rabbit that leading man Robin Williams carries for a brief cameo in What Dreams May Come. What’s more, we’ll be keeping a keen ear out and cringing happily as Hugh Jackman sports the latest range in “fair dinkum” accents; for where a single blemish is discerned, is there not then implicit something near-flawless? Or as we (don’t, in fact) say in Australia: better a fly in the ointment than a sick sheep with a festering wound and no salve to speak of… mate.

1. Justin Chang, variety, posted October 11, 2012 www.variety.com/review/VE1117948527/

Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 – reviewed by Douglas J. Ogurek

The filmgoer hoping to evade Edward Cullen’s (Robert Pattinson) constipated-while-sucking-on-a-lemon smile or Jacob Black’s (Taylor Lautner) shirtless torso in Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 (directed by Bill Condon) is out of luck. However, despite those and a few other minor irritations, the film combines suspense, violence and commendable acting to gracefully conclude the Twilight saga.

Heroine Bella Cullen (Kristen Stewart) must hone her newly-acquired vampiric powers. That means not only resisting the intense desire to drink human blood, but also keeping safe her newborn daughter Renesmee. The Volturi, an Italy-based coven of vampire rule enforcers, erroneously suspects that Renesmee is an immortal child (i.e. a human child turned vampire) with the potential to go on a bloodsucking blitzkrieg. That threatens the secrecy the Volturi strive to maintain among vampires. However, with their black cloaks and cadaverous faces, the members of the Volturi are not exactly the epitome of inconspicuousness.

The conflict between Edward and Jacob that fuelled the previous films has abated. Jacob, who has “imprinted on” – that’s werewolf speak for “declared himself a protector of” – Renesmee, hangs out at the Cullens’ Washington State home, where he keeps his trademark snide remarks and sneers to a minimum. Too bad.

The Cullens and Jacob spend most of the film gathering vampire “witnesses” to avoid bloodshed by convincing the approaching Volturi that Renesmee is half-vampire, half-human. Alas, the Volturi, in many ways resembling the upper-class, dislike anyone who is not a Volturi, and take an obvious pleasure in killing.

Though much of it is encased in a filming technique that many consider a no-no, the inevitable showdown between the Cullen clan and the Volturi in a snowy valley stands as the most thrilling scene in the Twilight series. Whereas the battle that concluded the Harry Potter series was chaotic and hard to follow, this one resembles a well-choreographed dance. It starts slowly, with individual Cullens crossing the snow-clad space between the increasingly tense battle lines in their attempts to persuade the Volturi. The conflict escalates to an intensity that would impress even the fan of eighties Schwarzenegger action films. Moreover, the stark white setting intensifies the viewer’s focus on the battle.

The true star of this film is Michael Sheen, who the filmmakers finally allow to unleash his talents as Aro, the ever-amused leader of the Volturi. As the wide-eyed villain clasps the hands of would-be victims to read their thoughts, his facial expressions resemble those of a necrophile at the morgue. At one point, he even giggles!

Cinematographic flourishes further galvanize the culminating scene. For instance, the camera positions Aro on the right side of the screen to create an imposing adversary who, despite Sheen’s five-foot nine-inch stature, seems as tall as the distant mountains. This technique also forces his clan (and the viewer’s eyes) away from the purity of the predominantly white landscape.

The film runs into trouble when it attempts to introduce so many secondary characters (i.e. the witnesses). Certainly possible in the 750+pp novel. Not so much in a 115 minute film. While some of these witnesses – the “creepy” (Jacob’s word) Romanian duo bent on revenge – add flavour, others seem as lively “as statues” (another Jacob gem). Additionally, the costume designers seem to have consulted with kindergartners before choosing some of the outfits for witnesses from other parts of the world.

The filmmakers took a risk in breaking Stephanie Meyer’s final novel into two films. The first four films focus on the development and consummation of Edward and Bella’s relationship. Many stories flounder when they attempt to move beyond this point. But Breaking Dawn Part 2 relies on an age-old strategy – the bad guys are coming! – to hold its own.

Many have argued that the Twilight films and their characters are overly dramatic. However, these are films about vampires, and vampires are dramatic! Just keep the lemons away from Edward.

Martian Sands by Lavie Tidhar, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

In Martian Sands by Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing, hb, 224pp), Mars has been settled. The New Israelis are governed by a succession of simulacra, Jewish leaders of the past recreated to act as figurehead prime ministers, but their new Golda Meir isn’t sticking to her programming. “Something is fundamentally flawed with reality,” she tells Miriam Elezra, the woman who commissioned her. There are rumours of time travel experiments, rumours the reader knows to be true having already seen Bill Glimmung in the Oval Office on December 7, 1941, the day before the first death camp opens, offering weapons to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in return for preventing the Holocaust. And yet on Mars we see that Bill Glimmung is a character from the film Martian Sands, “Elvis Mandela’s second masterpiece”. Carl Stone, who built the Golda, has four arms, two extras grafted on to reflect his status as “a Martian warrior, reincarnated in an alien world”. His Revolutionary Brotherhood of Martian Warriors share Barsoomian dreams, visions supposedly sent by their emperor. The most mysterious beings on Mars are the Others, artificial intelligences sometimes ferried by compliant humans, sometimes controlling host bodies. All roads lead to a remote kibbutz in the FDR mountains, the same kibbutz to which Josh has just made the kind of manure sale that could do wonders for his career.

Fans of Philip K. Dick will spot several tips of the hat here – “The Empire Never Ended”, time out of joint, and Ubiquitous Cigarettes (Ubiks for short) – and the quirky cleverness of combining Dick’s themes with the Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs might lead people to expect a light-hearted book. It often is, for example in a sequence in which intelligent bullets jostle in a gun, but the book is dedicated to the author’s grandparents, “the ones I knew, and the ones I didn’t”. Despite the risks inherent in the New Israeli attempt to change the course of history, if it were possible, would they be justified in trying? Other writers have portrayed old, decadent Earths ruled by nobles who remain after all others have left, but Tidhar explores, here and in other stories, a related but striking idea: that space could be colonised by the poor and unhappy, who might leave our relatively comfortable home planet in search of better lives. Martian Sands is the work of a serious writer who writes entertainingly, who can be funny, political, speculative, provocative and charming, all at the same time.

The author has mentioned a sequel on Twitter, though he thinks it might be too weird for publication. I’m not going to pretend I understood everything that was going on in Martian Sands, especially towards the end – it’s the kind of book that would repay a second reading, and a tutorial or two wouldn’t hurt – but I would love to read a sequel that was even weirder. Tidhar writes equally well in several genres; Cloud Permutations and Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God were, I thought, both excellent, but so dissimilar that one would be hard-pressed without title pages to identify them as the product of a single author. It seemed to me when reading Martian Sands that for Tidhar “classic science fiction” in the style of Silverberg, Brunner and Dick’s novels of the sixties is just another genre to which he can turn his hand as ably as he does all the others. In some ways that’s almost galling (“Here’s a Hugo winner I made earlier!”), but I hope he does it again.

Available from PS Publishing.

Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome, reviewed by Jacob Edwards

Another streaming pile of BS. Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome, directed by Jonas Pate, released 9 November 2012 (online); 10 February 2013 (television).

War with the Cylons has been raging for ten years when gung-ho new pilot William Adama (Luke Pasqualino) is posted to the Battlestar Galactica. His first mission, alongside jaded co-pilot Coker Fasjovik (Ben Cotton), turns from placidity to peril when their “cargo”, Doctor Beka Kelly (Lili Bordán), redirects them to a top secret rendezvous and subsequent infiltration deep within Cylon territory. As sacrifices are made and motivations uncovered, the idealistic young Adama must come to terms with war’s gritty reality…

—or some such. Consider it an exercise in loose terminology.

The original series of Battlestar Galactica (1978) become a cult hit, its premise – that of mankind’s seemingly futile, Frankensteinian fight for survival against its own ruthless progeny – proving sufficiently compelling to outlast memories of the lacklustre sequel series Galactica 1980 and eventually give rise to a successful relaunch with the born-again Battlestar Galactica of 2003–2009. Fronted by Edward James Olmos as the esteemed Commander Adama, this new take on the franchise started strongly before dwindling away into the ever-increasing spiral of absurdity that seems de rigueur of series that seek eternal renewal without ever a hint of resolution. This downward spin culminated in the abysmal Caprica (2010), at which point many a delirious viewer was left glassy-eyed and pining for the appearance (unforthcoming, except perhaps allegorically) of the scything seppuku Battleship ChickenTikkaMasala. Or Flight of the Conchords qua highly strung robots, singing, “The humans are dead, the humans are de-ead…” Or perhaps even Metal Mickey. Anything, really. Whatever was necessary just to make it stop.

And yet, streaming online and then direct to TV, the saga now continues.

Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome may satisfy some dark, destructive craving on the part of BSG’s most diehard fans – of which there are some 4,500, judging by the farcical 7.4 rating on IMDB – but in essence what it amounts to is a step-by-step progression by which stock characters go through standard arcs amidst whirling, computer game graphics so as to provide a backstory so intrinsically bland that it will have papier mâché artisans the world over packing up their wares and heading for the nearest SF convention. Pasqualino is a slightly odd choice as the young Adama (his Italian retrofitting somehow more reminiscent of Keanu Reeves than of Edward James Olmos), and while Ben Cotton does his best, he’s very much fighting an uphill battle against cliché and pique. Blood & Chrome’s music, at least, is well done – kudos here to Bear McCreary, who also scored the 2004–2009 series and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – but, truth be told, this still seems precious little upon which to hang even one’s small screen expectations.

The most obvious shortcoming of BSG:BC is, unsurprisingly, its script, which was set down like a bucket of soapy water by messieurs Taylor, Eick, Thompson and Weddle (all of whom were on deck when the revamped series started to sink). So as to avoid spoilers, let us imagine their plot in terms of another epic BC production – Homer’s Iliad:

The Greeks and the Trojans are ten years into a great war, which the Greeks are losing quite desperately (even though the incumbent deprivations are yet to filter down through their affluent economy). Drawn by the propaganda posters advocating duty, survival and wanton, communal bathing, Young Achilles aces his sword-fighting exams and – dreaming that the gods have farted poisonously on him, but that he has blithely outwitted them – signs up for the army. Although he is immediately consigned to rowing a cargo ship alongside world-weary Odysseus, the delightful Helen (who accidentally started the whole war, and whom Achilles has just encountered in the shower block) redirects his boat to a hush-hush assignation somewhere out near Trojan territory. They arrive, but the Greek trireme they were expecting to meet has been obliterated, and now is of little use other than to provide a floating obstacle course of debris and dead bodies. Wait! There are Trojans lurking. They attack, but Achilles is a fine rower. He whisks his boat to safety, destroying his three pursuers even as Odysseus blubbers in the gunwale and shrieks at him to stop being so bloody stupid. Phew. Now that the threat has passed, Helen tells Achilles and Odysseus to shout out their location as loud as they can. Sceptical, they do, and are immediately told where to sail next by a helpful Greek lookout who’s been skulking around close by. Off they go, Odysseus protesting and Achilles getting a kick out of this whole military duty thing. They arrive at Agamemnon’s secret depot of Greek warships and immediately are threatened with annihilation… unless they have the password! Achilles doesn’t have it. Odysseus doesn’t have it. Helen does, but she’s not paying attention, and in any case doesn’t know it. She has to read it in the orders she’s carrying. Where is it? Where is it? Oh, phew. That was close. Ah-ha! The secret mission is unveiled. Achilles and Odysseus must escort Helen to Troy – a near-deserted city deep within Trojan territory, from which incursion point Helen will do something vital to the war effort. Possibly a striptease. The city is most likely unguarded, but just in case some Trojans do appear, Achilles & Co. are concealed within a giant wooden horse. Good plan. They arrive, and– darn it, just at that moment, an army of Trojans appears on the horizon. They haven’t seen the Greeks yet. Good. Agamemnon has a plan. Achilles, Odysseus and Helen can dress up in a horse suit and try to sneak into the city, while the rest of the Greeks use the giant horse as a decoy. Risky. Couldn’t we come back later…? No! This is war, damn it. (And besides, Helen’s pole-dance can’t wait a moment longer.) Point of no return. Achilles & Co. set off, as do various other Greeks in horse suits. The Trojans attack. The Greeks are outnumbered. The giant horse is taking heavy fire from flaming arrows and well-aimed ballistae. The Greeks in horse suits are being shot down. There are Trojans on Achilles’ tail (again)! But all is not lost. While Achilles, Odysseus and Helen galumph towards the city, Agamemnon decides to ram the Trojans with the great wooden horse. The Trojans obviously respect this decision, for once the horse starts towards them, they immediately stop attacking it. The horse grows nearer. The Trojans wait. The horse collides with the Trojan’s horse (which is bigger and has a fancy plume). The Greek horse is destroyed. All on board perish. Bummer. But at least there’s only three Trojans chasing after Achilles & Co., who by this stage have reached the city gates. Achilles steers the horse suit brilliantly, destroying two of the pursuers. The third is taken care of by releasing a stream of horse poo and setting it on fire. Achilles, Odysseus and Helen enter the city, whereupon the Trojans forget all about them, perhaps thinking that they perished during the galloping crash with which they crossed the line. Ah, but they didn’t! So far, so good. Except… the Greek insurgents they were supposed to meet have all been killed. Odysseus and Helen fall down a hole. Thinking of nothing better to do, Achilles jumps after them. They are attacked by one of Cassandra’s serpents, and rescued by the sole survivor of the Greek commandos. (He’s a bit of a psycho and has set booby traps everywhere. Because– well, you never know, do you?) They head for Priam’s chambers to take shelter for the night. Nobody’s looking for them, but– Okay, well they are now that some Trojans have wandered into the booby traps. The psycho gets drunk. Odysseus plays the harp. Achilles and Helen have sex. The Trojans attack! The psycho calls out “cooee” to a Trojan, and is spitted with arrows. Achilles is cornered, but beats a Trojan (call him Hector) to death using an old piece of seaweed. Helen is cornered as well, but the Trojan seems quite fond of her necklace… Poignant moment, but then Odysseus and Achilles come to the rescue. Trojan dead. Helen sad. Mission continues. They must go to the temple and send a message to the gods. The gods will broadcast it to the Trojans, and the Trojans, being highly susceptible to such things, will give up. The war will be over. But Helen has other ideas. (Just look at what they did to Paris, she sobs.) The war – oh, this terrible war! – will only end when the Greeks surrender. Hence, the Trojans must be helped. The message to the gods is a trick to reveal the location of Agamemnon’s secret fleet. Odysseus spots it, and shoots Helen, but is himself shot. Achilles is shot. Helen goes to shoot him again, but thankfully runs out of arrows. Achilles shoots up the temple, then takes Odysseus and leaves. The two of them sit around in the moonlight and shout out “Help!” until those of the Greeks that weren’t slaughtered in the burning horse suicide run come along and whisk them off to safety, not a Trojan in sight.

There is, needless to say, a further twist, but by this stage the embers have burnt down and Homer has shuffled off to empty his bladder and gnaw on some old goat pieces. And the saddest part is, that capriciously transposing Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome onto an ancient setting in no way makes it less plausible. (Indeed, the conscious disparity might well be said, through tacitly acknowledging the film’s Achilles’ heel, to have lessened the negative impact of its prickle-embedded and limping plot.) Because, in essence, BSG:BC is a free-floating morality-of-war film that pays scant attention to either the specific conflict or the details of the human/Cylon universe. It tries instead to force tension and adrenaline into scenarios that lack sufficient build-up, and to superimpose drama onto characters that have been dolloped up from the stockpot of eternal blandness. Worst of all, the filmmakers’ grasp of military tactics, strategy and grand strategy is… tenuous (mild censure of the day); or perhaps just simplistic (with all the tell-tale incision marks of a four-pronged lobotomy). Actually, the one term that springs most readily to mind is “General Melchett-like”, only without the requisite comic intent or a sardonic Blackadder character to play up the absurdity.

In some respects, watching Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome is reminiscent of being shepherded across the road by a lollipop lady at a school crossing where there are no kids and no cars – an uneasy mixture of embarrassment and empathic condolences for all concerned. Yes, the name “Nate Underkuffler” does appear in the closing credits (for those who threw themselves grasping at straws, but missed), but surely, even in the most arid and undiscerning of parallel universes, that cannot by itself provide sufficient impetus for a movie to take flight…? And yet, BSG fans might smugly riposte, seven-point-four on IMDB, when even The Frighteners only managed seven-point-one…

Yes, well put it this way: if Mr T hadn’t taken a vow of silence, there’s every chance he’d even now be stomping around his mansion, tearing his mohawk out and proclaiming, “I pity the fool!”

The Host, reviewed by Douglas J. Ogurek

Don’t expect another Twilight. In her hugely popular Twilight Saga, author Stephenie Meyer perfected a strategy that compelled people in droves to purchase her books (over 100 million copies sold worldwide) and then convince their partners to accompany them to the films. Meyer’s formula involves two young men vying for the heart of a female protagonist, while outside forces threaten that triangle.

The Host (directed by Andrew Niccol), the film inspired by Meyer’s first post-Twilight Saga novel, relies on a similar strategy. However, the characters, the threat and the action in The Host are diluted in comparison.

Aliens that resemble glowing bugs have rid the Earth of violence and hunger by commandeering human bodies (i.e. hosts). A few humans have managed to evade the invaders and go into hiding. Not a new concept. However, what is new is that this body invasion film makes little mystery about who’s human and who’s not. If the eyes glow, they’re aliens.

After she is implanted in a human body, the alien who calls herself Wanderer discovers that her host, Melanie, isn’t going to give up her mind without a fight. While Wanderer’s emotionless colleagues encourage her to use Melanie’s memories to help them track down other humans, Melanie pushes Wanderer to help humans. The film relies on voiceover to reveal what Melanie is saying to Wanderer. So Wanderer has to speak to show that she’s talking. Though inescapable, the technique loses much of the intimacy of the novel. Also, there’s something inherently silly about voiceover, which is partly why it works so well in a film like Warm Bodies, and is less effective for the purportedly serious The Host.

The majority of the film takes place in a cave in the southwestern U.S. Here Wanderer and Melanie carry out their struggles with a group of humans led by Melanie’s uncle Jeb, the “benign dictator” of the underground community. As Jeb, William Hurt affects a Patrick Swayzesque sense of sagely calm. This could be the first and last philosopher named Jeb.

It’s also in the mountain where the filmmakers fall short of the potential within Meyer’s formula. Melanie wants to convince boyfriend Jared that she is still somewhere in her body, while Wanderer falls for Ian, despite his initial attempt to strangle her. A complex dynamic. Here is the chance to really flesh out these young men, to make them passionate and driven like their Twilight predecessors. No such luck. Jared has none of the eccentricities that make Edward so compelling, and Ian is to Jacob Black as a gnat’s exhalation is to a tornado.

Additionally, the aliens’ means of locating Wanderer are a bit underwhelming. A race of aliens that has managed to conquer nine planets relies on desktop computers, sports cars, motorcycles and helicopters to locate their prey? Moreover, the silver vehicles, glass and steel buildings, exposed concrete walls in minimalist interiors, and white clothing give one the impression that these aliens base their society not on their planet-conquering ingenuity, but on Hollywood’s sci-fi clichés.

Perhaps the worst problem of The Host is the dialogue, some of which seems to have been culled from greeting cards. One of the most flagrant offences occurs in a flashback during which Melanie and Jared arrive at a carpe diem conclusion regarding the consummation of their relationship. The aliens are coming, Melanie points out, so we better get going! Only she does it in a sickeningly sentimental fashion.

The Seeker is the (female) leader of the alien pursuers. Compared to Arro, the enchantingly peculiar lead bad guy in Breaking Dawn, The Seeker is as memorable as a snowflake in a desert.

The Host isn’t great, but it doesn’t quite deserve the critical excoriation that it received. Though the concept of a human communicating with an alien occupying her body isn’t new in literature (read Frank and Brian Herbert’s 1986 A Man of Two Worlds), the idea has not been explored in film to a great extent. Perhaps there’s a reason for that. Or maybe the next attempt will learn from this film’s shortcomings.

Like Minority Report, though far inferior and probably much less prescient, The Host disperses several interesting ideas throughout the film to keep the viewer engaged. Take the inner-mountain wheat field that gets sunlight from mirrors embedded in the rock above it. Or the grocery store (pragmatically named “Store”) with brand-free goods that customers simply pluck from the shelves, then take without paying.

From an American perspective, perhaps the most appealing advance is the aliens’ healthcare system. No waiting. No paperwork. No insurance. Just a quick spray and you’re healed. One wishes that such a spray were available for The Host.—DOUGLAS J. OGUREK (www.douglasjogurek.weebly.com)

Borderlands 2, reviewed by Howard Watts

It’s impossible to cover every complexity Borderlands 2 (2KGames, PS3) provides the player. Its scope is astonishing, its detail overwhelming both visually and from a character POV, even though the scenario is fairly basic. In short, there’s a bad guy called Handsome Jack in partial control of the planet Pandora, and the player or “Vault Hunter” is pitted against him, his minions and the indigenous lifeforms of the planet. Did I say player? You can choose from four characters (with a fifth, the mechromancer, available via DLC): an assassin, a siren, a soldier and an atypical heavyweight grunt. Each character enjoys their own unique special combat action skill, which is enhanced via levelling up. These characters also enjoy three skill trees, enhancing combat in a variety of ways.

This all sounds simplistic, but the real attractions of Borderlands 2 are its visuals and characters. Characters are all finely drawn (some appearing a second time from the first game, as is one location) providing a great deal of humour, tragedy and depth. From a killer robot’s A.I. core wanting to change its ways and be installed into a radio, to another obsessed with introducing sexual innuendo into its conversations, a commando stating: “And I was just gonna complete my comic collection,” as he corrodes into a cloud of gas, Pandora in all its open world splendour containing its insane inhabitants soon becomes a believable, viable setting. Although some critics have objected to the comic book appearance of the graphics (think Moebius in Heavy Metal magazine) the alien landscapes – from frozen wastes to dusty deserts – contain an enormous attention to graphical detail, making you wander up to objects to wonder exactly what they’re for. The entire planet has an established ecosystem, populated by various plant and animal life that all add depth to the setting.

The game is a shopper’s heaven, with thousands of boxes, lockers, crates and other containers to loot. Some contain money, or a basic rusty pistol that performs with a pathetic “tut, tut, tut”, others an acid firing bazooka that reduces badass gun loader robots to sizzling scrap. The developers have gone on record saying the software generates millions of different gun types, all with varying effectiveness for the many missions and adversaries encountered. Along with these, the player will need to match protective shields (some absorb bullets and add them to your inventory, others electrocute enemies when they melee attack) as well as grenades that can steal an adversary’s health, or bounce up down on the spot spitting bullets as they rotate. There are some devastating combinations to be assembled early on in the game, forcing the player to believe the following levels will be a breeze. However, you’ll soon find your favourite pistol/SMG/rocket launcher/sniper rifle will become sadly redundant against more formidable foes and objectives. It’s hard to let go, but it has to be done as more goodies tempt you with their devastating effects. The attention to design detail for these objects is superb, with every pick-up beautifully rendered.

Borderlands 2 provides a game experience like no other. Every aspect speaks of quality, from the atmospheric soundtrack that’s not too intrusive, to the sound design and animation – weapons feel as they should, the larger ones taking just that little longer to heft. Okay, it’s not perfect, as some objectives can become a little repetitive, but the game allows missions to be toggled – so it’s just a case of switching to a different mission – either side or main story. The whole package is huge in its scope, and you’ll be spending a great deal of rewarding, challenging game time caught up in the absorbing locations of Pandora’s borderlands. Spend your money. 9/10.

Señor 105 and the Elements of Danger, edited by Cody Quijano-Schell, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

“I am Señor 105 of Mexico. I fight for freedom, the defense of mankind and I am a friend to all children.” Iris Wildthyme’s superluchador chum, who has a mask for every element and (I think) a power for every mask, takes his place in the spotlight in Señor 105 and the Elements of Danger (Obverse Books, 106pp), edited by the character’s creator Cody Quijano-Schell, who also supplies the cover design (Paul Hanley being the artist) and a story, “Jackalope”, in which a pair of skinnydippers are attacked by horned bunny rabbits. That gives you a taste of what to expect here! If you go back far enough I think this book counts as a spin-off from Doctor Who, but the tone is more reminiscent of the quirky (and sadly short-lived) television series The Middleman, which also featured a luchador or two; its comedy comes from the seriousness with which a rather silly world is treated by its unfortunate (from our point of view) but happy-go-lucky inhabitants.

In “Señor 105 contre el Bigote de Perdición” by Lawrence Burton, 105 is up against the man with the mightiest moustache in Mexico. It feels like a great idea for a story, without becoming a great story itself. Similarly, “Megaluchador vs Iguanadios” by Jonathan Dennis, which sees 105 climbing into a giant robot version of himself to battle a giant lizard, isn’t quite as much fun as it sounds. “Are You Loathesome Tonight” by Blair Bidmead features a lounge lizard (literally) Elvis who is creating a malformation of space and time with his music, the results described in powerful simile: “‘It’s like an Escher drawing,’ gasped Sheila. ‘Made of meat,’ I concurred.” Take the space between this paragraph and the next to let that image sink in!

This is another worthwhile collection from Obverse, though I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as some of their other titles. On the whole, the stories don’t quite manage to fulfil the promise of their wild ideas: reading the summaries above and below, I’m still surprised I didn’t like the book more. The dialogue and narration tends to lack the spark, crackle and wit a concept like this needs to make it soar. But the book does get stronger as it goes on. In Julio Angel Ortiz’s “Anti-Element”, Matador de Almas, Chiquito Invader, Terrible Prince, Capitan Muerte and the Princess of Pandemonium (Pandora X) collaborate to send 105 to die at the hands of the desperate hero of a battle-ravaged dimension, the result an entertaining interdimensional team-up. “There and Back Again” by Niamh Petit has a clever idea – a time control device that lets a person switch with past and future selves – and makes of it the best story of the collection. A future version of Señor 105 has bad news about what’s to come, and as the story moves into that future he keeps switching with progressively unhappier selves from further ahead. In “Glyph” by Joe Curreri an old enemy returns, one with a grudge from the days when he was merely Señor 93, before the book ends with a fragment from the editor and a note putting the character in context.

Like previous Obverse titles, the review copy of Señor 105 and the Elements of Danger was marred by a number of small errors, but I’ll always put up with those for the sake of this publisher’s dedication to publishing the kind of books I always look forward to reading. In an indie scene dominated (or perhaps it would be fairer to say propped up) by horror, it’s good to have a small press devoted to this quirky, modern brand of science fantasy. This being a fairly old book now, one whose shiny, unfulfilled promise caught my eye from the depths of the review pile, and a limited edition in the Obverse Quarterly series at that, it may not be available for purchase in your preferred format by the time you read this (see below for links). If not, look out for similar titles from Obverse in future, or try the series of Señor 105 novellas being published by Obverse’s ebook offshoot Manleigh Books. I will: Señor 105 doesn’t manage a smackdown here, but the potential is definitely there.

Ebook available here. Print available here.

Aliens: Colonial Marines, reviewed by Howard Watts

Aliens: Colonial Marines (Sega, PS3). It would be pointless for me to go into great detail regarding the backstory to this game: suffice to say, it follows straight on from the events of James Cameron’s rather excellent Aliens.

From the outset, it’s clear the developers have attempted to maintain a cinematic experience in this game. The titles and original music by James Horner create the perfect atmosphere, and we’re assured by this beautifully rendered intro that we’re in safe hands. From then on the backstory establishes the game’s scenario: explore the Sulaco…

The film’s original sets are replicated well, but the lack of options for setting up the game’s video display (screen brightness, position) cause an early frown, as the game is very dark, and the position of the HUD is clipped slightly on my 46" set. I shook off these two minor niggles and discarded my frown, unaware at such an early stage it would return with a vengeance very soon.

The characters are stereotypical for military FPS: gravel-voiced grunts, mirroring my frown of earlier, looking as though they’ve just walked out of a WWF game and donned combats. They lead you onto the Sulaco where the ship’s cryogenic sleep chamber is perfectly realised. Other areas appear bereft of creativity with unimaginative repeating corridors, decorations and patterns. My frown now began to creep back, as the textures lacked detail, the controls rather jerky and somewhat “heavy”, the continuing darkness (lacking contrast) maintaining for an obvious “what’s in the shadows?” effect. When Michael Biehn’s character, Corporal Hicks, makes an appearance you’ll be forgiven for thinking things are on the up. They’re not, as the likeness to Michael Biehn is utterly terrible, and the actor performs voice duties with an obvious lack of enthusiasm.

As the game “progressed” down to LV426 and the settlement of Hadley’s Hope, nothing much changes I’m afraid. The darkness continues, and as the first xenos appeared I shook my head. The detail and colour gamut are straight out of a 1990s effort, a betrayal of gamers and fans of the Alien series alike. The xenos are cartoony, perfectly matching their adversaries. The game then leads you from one “You gotta push this so we can do that” objective to the next. Character is non-existent, leading me to skip the story segments to see if things would improve and if I’d care. They don’t and I didn’t.

Then I found myself climbing into a Power Loader, sealed in an arena with a big “Boss” xeno, accompanied by its smaller cousins. The boss was instantly dispatched by a choking grip from the loader’s claw, only for the boss to die and fall through a wall. The smaller xenos kept on coming, and coming, and coming, until it was obvious after five minutes of repeated play the software had glitched. Reset. I plodded on, from one badly rendered environment to the next, unimpressed by the ability to “upgrade” my weapons with either an extended mag, silencer, or telescopic sight, or collect movie characters’ weapons, with only a “sneak by” level providing me with any thrills (in spite of the xenos looking like men shuffling in uncomfortable rubber suits). Finally, after eight or so hours of play, the whole shoddy affair was over, and I breathed a sigh of relief and groan of sorrow. “Game over man, GAME OVER!”

Indeed, and not a moment too soon. Save your money. 2/10.

A Game of Groans by George R.R. Washington, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Comedy is an awfully subjective thing. Much as I adore Annie Hall, I reckon Dana Carvey’s The Master of Disguise runs it darn close as one of the funniest films of all time (“Sometimes the Master of Disguise he comes back, sometimes he don’t!”), an opinion likely to earn me the hatred of most right-thinking IMBD users. It just tickles me, as do The Animal, Jack and Jill and The Love Guru. So I understand how subjective comedy can be, and I’m not a comedy snob. I’ve watched every single episode of Two and a Half Men.

Having said that, I can now go on to discuss A Game of Groans by George R.R. Washington (chortle!) (Virgin, pb, 232pp), and, while acknowledging that you might well find this parody hilarious, explain why I thought it such a miserable, joyless experience. It just isn’t funny. I read the entire book stony-faced, never cracking a smile and laughing just once, on page 128, at the name “Lord Analwarts Candlestick”. Even that was a quick, thoughtless bark rather than a sign of true appreciation, mentioned here only to pay the book its due, small as it is. Most of this book’s jokes revolve around wind-breaking (chapter one begins “Allbran Barker broke wind”). Normally a fart joke is all I need to make me laugh (Brent Spiner’s inadvertent squeaking in The Master of Disguise was so funny our children came downstairs and asked us to laugh more quietly so that they could sleep) but these weaker emissions dissipated without provoking the slightest mirth.

The plot is basically that of A Game of Thrones, with the threat from the north here being the Others, though in a typically pathetic running joke they want to be known as “The Awesomes!”, and interject to say as much whenever other characters mention them. If you’re not laughing yet, you will be when you hear that the Others (“The Awesomes!”) are Harry Potter, Lord Voldemort, Darth Vader, Spock, C-3PO, Aslan and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Hilarious!

The book has one notable feature. After all the jokes made in the UK about those daft Americans who’d think The Madness of George III a sequel, or couldn’t have coped with the Philosopher’s Stone, here’s a book whose subtitle has been changed for our benefit, from A Sonnet of Slush & Soot to A Parody of Slush & Soot. Presumably because we wouldn’t have got the joke (it’s rather shorter than A Song of Ice and Fire) and would have thought it actually was a poem.

Would that the solicitous soul who changed the title for we simple British folk had read the book itself, at least to page two, because then we would have been spared what looks like (unintentionally, I’m sure) the most racist joke I’ve encountered since, well, since I left Keighley. I’ll give the American author a pass on that (a similar gaffe was once made by Guy Gardner, to his writer’s horror), but the writer must take the blame for turning abused and exploited women from the original into raging nymphomaniacs, or having a tribe talk in Ooga-booga language (even if they are pretending). Whether having the Jon Snow character speak Spanish, with his every utterance translated in footnotes, is offensive or not is for Spanish speakers to decide, but it makes for desperately feeble, tedious humour.

A Game of Groans is so poor that, not having read the George R.R. Martin original (so admittedly I may have missed the nuances of some jokes), I began to read through it, ignoring the surface attempts at humour to discern what I could of the original inspiration hiding within, like reading Plato to get a glimpse of Socrates. Daft, but I had to find a way to get through this enthusiastically, relentlessly, ruthlessly (because you just know it was written to order) unfunny book. I tried reading it with a bottle of Crabbies on the go, and I tried reading it after watching episodes of New Girl and The Big Bang Theory that had me in stitches, and both times it still fell flat. Or to put it another way (as the book does at p. 184): “Ever watched Anymal House while sipping on grog, gnawing on a turkey leg and rubbing a cheese grater across your stomach? It was a lot like that.” It’s less funny than Meet the Spartans and takes three times as long to get through. It’s also surprisingly unpleasant about the writer whose work it is exploiting. But if you enjoy this I won’t judge you, so long as you don’t judge me for liking Happy Gilmore and Freddy Got Fingered.

A Coming of Age by Timothy Zahn, reviewed by Jacob Edwards

Second life, not secondhand. A Coming of Age by Timothy Zahn (Open Road, 2012).

When people who were born in the twentieth century grow old and look back upon their lives, one topic they are sure to reminisce about – to the utter bafflement of those younger generations who dutifully will now send forth their avatars to visit – is that of the secondhand bookshop; a dying breed even today, but each with its own idiosyncrasies and charm, its unique layout and ever-changing stock, its worn carpets, creaking floorboards and double-stacked shelves (or occasionally just high-risen piles that have become structurally integral), its ensconced, often erudite owner and of course its ever-curious and -acquisitive, peripatetic clientele of book-loving nomads, who whenever they arrive somewhere new find themselves drawn inexorably to the tell-tale bargain bins out front, and then nosing forward and inside, lungs swelling contentedly at the heady inrush of old book smells.

Ironically, what has doomed these esteemed bastions of the well-thumbed, pre-loved book is not, as one might have soothsaid, a groundswell of illiteracy, a flash fiction mentality or some mindless and storm-blown reverence for the blog-ridden txt (even if we oldsters-in-the-making tend to bristle more at such irritants) but rather an electronically expanded horizon and the gobsmacking globalisation of the bookshops in question. The world is now a warehouse. Bowerbirds of the printed word may line their nests merely with a click of the beak and have their eclectic reading materials delivered from anywhere on the planet. Moreover, with the advent of print-on-demand and ebooks, an author’s back catalogue need never be out of print; rather, the capacity exists for all heretofore-rare tomes to be stored and made available, without appreciable overheads, direct from the publishers. Bibliophiles be warned, the cursor is well and truly blinking on the wall.

Much though one might fulminate against this general affront to the way things were, nevertheless there must lie some insidious appeal in being able to lurk at home like a Bandersnatch and gratuitously just reach out and latch on to those skittish works that never previously strayed within range or set timorous foot in a secondhand bookshop. Such undeniably is the case with Timothy Zahn’s novel A Coming of Age, which first appeared in 1984 – the same year that Zahn himself came of age as a SF writer, winning a Hugo Award for his novella Cascade Point – and which now has been re-released in both POD and e-formats. So much attention has Zahn garnered over the last two decades for his serial novels and involvement with the Star Wars universe, that new readers might easily have overlooked the quality (indeed, in some cases the existence) of his earlier, stand-alone novels and shorter fiction. Gratifyingly, this need no longer apply. A few minor typographical errors notwithstanding, each bookshop owner’s dark plight becomes here the SF lover’s gain; and not just YA readers (who doubtlessly will be drawn in alongside the fourteen-year-old protagonist) but anyone who has cultivated an appreciation of clearly written, well developed, genuinely imaginative, ideas-driven science fiction.

The crux of Zahn’s scenario in A Coming of Age is the powerful telekinetic abilities that all children of the planet Tigris gain from five years of age and then lose upon entering puberty. The resulting power balance has considerable ramifications for Tigrian society, and yet Zahn explores this with the subtleness almost of peripheral vision, all the while keeping his readers absorbed and focused on two major (and one minor) intertwined storylines. The first of these centres on Lisa Duncan, whose childhood position of responsibility is about to segue (or perhaps plummet) into a daunting new adult life, her coming-of-age fears pre-empting an illicit interest in literacy and so bringing about an upheaval in her cosy but strictly regimented world order. The second follows the investigation of police inspector Stanford Tirrell and his preteen right-hand man Tonio as they search for a five-year-old boy they believe to have been kidnapped by a “fagin” – unscrupulous criminals who by proselytising and brainwashing exploit children for their teekay abilities. Zahn mixes urgency with suspense in recounting the various intrigues of A Coming of Age, but in contrast to some of his later novels – The Icarus Hunt, for example, or The Green and the Gray – makes no attempt to sustain one overriding mystery throughout the course of the story. Instead, he moves his twin plots forward on carefully laid tracks of dramatic irony: tantalising; revealing; forever taking the reader into his confidence, but only sufficiently to show the protagonists drawn deeper and deeper into peril.

Because A Coming of Age is so deeply enmeshed in its underlying conceit, each plot progression brings creeping with it a deeper appreciation of the (slyly dystopian) child/adult dynamic that Zahn posits. In this sense even the one slightly jarring feature of the book – Lisa’s dropping back to the periphery as events necessitate Tirrell’s greater involvement – can be seen less as a shortcoming and more as a young novelist’s aptly placed piece of discord, the disparity serving to resonate, however unnervingly, with adolescent ignorance and trepidations concerning what the future might hold. For those of us who would have been young adult readers when A Coming of Age was first released, such misgivings have long since been replaced with a stomach-pitted fear for the world’s secondhand bookshops (in all their dwindling number). The novel itself, however, has lost none of its allure or relevance – thirty years on and Zahn’s early work is every bit as fresh and compelling as when first it hit those musty shelves.