Christopher East

According to WordPress, this is the 100th post I’ve made to this blog.  Back in January when I started this blog, if you’d told me I would write 100 blog posts in an entire year (let alone its first eight months), I would have laughed in your face.

Of course, I owe it all to Jenn, and I can’t think of a better subject for a milestone blog post than my awesome girlfriend.  Three years ago this past Wednesday was the first day we met, and we both still think of that as our first date.  She’s made my life immeasurably better in just about  every respect.  Thanks, sweetie!  I dedicate these first 100 blog posts to you! 

James Morrow’s previous two novels, The Last Witchfinder and The Philosopher’s Apprentice, are both highly intelligent and challenging books, wonderfully detailed and funny, and bursting with the author’s boundless enthusiasm for his material.   In both cases, that material is at the academic and intellectual end of the spectrum — at times, I felt like some of the jokes would have benefited from an advanced degree in history or philosophy — but for me, the unusual territory was a big part of the fun.  Morrow’s work is ever thought-provoking, and I’ll gladly stretch out of my comfort zone to see what he has to say.

Morrow’s latest release — a short novel entitled Shambling Towards Hiroshima (2009) — feels like a relaxing, breezy read by comparison.  The subject matter is no less esoteric, and just as thematically serious, but the milieu is somewhat more welcoming to the casual reader.  It’s the story of Syms K. Thorley, a noted creature-feature actor of Hollywood’s Golden Age, and his participation in a military project to bring an early end to the war against Japan in 1945.  Told in flashback from Thorley’s seedy Baltimore hotel on the night he’s received a lifetime achievement award from a science fiction convention, it tells the tale of his recruitment into a U.S. Navy biological weapons project to…well, to unleash giant lizards against the Japanese mainland, in order to head off a more conventional invasion and its requisite military casualties.  This initiative, a covert rival of the Manhattan Project, quickly turns into a collaboration between the Navy and Hollywood, and makes for a compelling, amusingy absurd, but ultimately powerful tale.

At a brisk 170 pages, Shambling Towards Hiroshima is tightly constructed, and engagingly recaptures the L.A. of the 1940s from the Hollywood Hills to the inland deserts.  Since this is a secret history — not an alternate one — the ending is never really in doubt, of course:  we all know which war-ending military project wins the race.  But Morrow’s witty and enjoyable narrative succeeds despite the inherent spoiler, making the ride enjoyable enough that the somewhat predictable result is not a detriment.  He also absolutely nails the required absurdist tone to make his Godzilla plot work, so that the book is at once a lovingly crafted homage to the low budget sci-fi films of a bygone era, and a serious and elegiac look back at the unfortunate path of actual history.  Morrow masterfully brings all the loopy, comical build-up to a surprisingly sobering and powerful conclusion.

Much as I hate to say it, Terry Gilliam’s body of work has, in my opinion, steadily degraded since his madly inventive film Brazil came out in 1985.  There’s been a lot to like in some of his subsequent films, most notably The Fisher King and Twelve Monkeys, but to me he’s never surpassed the vision of his complex, imaginative masterpiece involving high fantasy, low bureaucracy, and ductwork.  Brazil is my favorite film, like, ever.  On some level, I think everything he’s done since is bound to suffer in comparison, for me at least.

So I went into his curious film Tideland (2005) with some trepidation.  It opens with a weirdly apologetic intro from Gilliam, during which the theme is rather baldly explained, before launching into a movie that is ultimately not very appealing, but is in some ways rather interesting.

The film involves a young girl named Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland), who lives in a shockingly inappropriate household under the unfortunate guardianship of her parents, a junkie rock-’n'-roller (Jeff Bridges) and a recovering addict (Jennifer Tilly).  When mom dies, dad convinces the daughter that they’re off on an adventure, but leads them ultimately to a condemned house in the middle of nowhere, where he checks out on heroin.  Left to her own devices, Jeliza-Rose explores her house and the surrounding areas, showing childlike resilience and imagination in the face of bleak, bleak circumstances.

Although there’s a certain intrigue in the opening of the film, I found the pacing sluggish as it moved along, and my mind really started to wander, particularly later in the film when Jeliza-Rose befriends strange neighbors Janet McTeer and Brendan Fletcher.  It’s easy to see, though, why the material appealed to Gilliam, whose work has always betrayed a grim fascination with the seedy underbellies of his fictional worlds, even as the characters who inhabit them strive for wonderful, cheerier flights of fancy.  Here, Jeliza-Rose serves — as the intro uncomfortably notifies us — as the Gilliam-figure, a child-like dreamer maneuvering herself bravely through a world of shit, and trying to make the best of it.  Sounds a little like Gilliam’s film career, and you can see how this is a highly personal film for him, and why he would want to explain it.

Unfortunately, it’s just not that enjoyable a thing to watch.  Despite some characteristic visual flourishes and some moments of sheer, Gilliamesque surprise, Tideland is a plodding film that perhaps belabors its point.  Had I enjoyed the acting of Jodelle Ferland, I could see the film might have worked better, but alas I didn’t, and that may have been the death knell for it, in my book.  (Although, in some respects, her performance is much easier to watch than those of her adult counterparts — Jeff Bridges excluded, of course…that guy can do anything.)  I suspect that, when Gilliam’s storied and inimitable film career is complete, Tideland will be examined with sympathy and interest by future film historians.  But for the casual film-goer, I’m guessing it will mostly disappoint.

I used to follow Gardner Dozois‘ year’s best anthology — arguably the annual standard-bearer for quality short fiction in the genre — pretty steadily, but I got out of the habit a while ago.  I used to read much more heavily at shorter lengths, and there was easily enough crossover between the magazines  and Dozois’ anthology to make buying the latter redundant.  Things have changed, though — most of my short fiction reading these days is at the submission level for Futurismic – so reading my first year’s best in a while, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, 26th Annual Collection (2009), felt like a brand-new experience.  And by and large I found it a highly rewarding one. Continue Reading »

Last night I got back from a whirlwind, 48-hour trip out to Iowa.  I lived in Iowa City from 1996 to 2007, and this was my first chance to get back there since I moved here to L.A., just over two years ago.  It was pretty much a perfect little two-day getaway, where I got to spend some time with basically my very best friends from the Iowa days, one of whom got married on Saturday.

My route took me from Burbank (thank goodness, no LAX!) to Dallas and on to the Eastern Iowa Airport in Cedar Rapids (aka “The Best, Easiest Little Airport in the Whole Damn Country”).  I rented a brand-spanking new Kia Forte (nice ride!) and drove down to stay with Carol, one of my very best friends in the world, in Coralville.  That night I crashed the rehearsal dinner and had a great time catching up with the bride-to-be and another really good friend, before heading back home for an unprecedented 11-hour night of sleep.  (I woke up kind of shocked at what time it was!)

I had time to kill before the wedding on Saturday so I spent most of the morning and early afternoon cruising the streets of Iowa City and Coralville.  I guess I haven’t really been gone long enough for there to be huge changes, although there was still plenty of evidence (if not as much as I was expecting) of the huge floods that wracked the region not too long ago.  Zipping around the familiar streets, past old haunts and a succession of former apartments, I found myself strangely emotional about the place…missing it dearly and the wonderful people I don’t get to see any more, but also remembering a lot of the history and baggage that made me feel it was time to move on.

The wedding and the reception were out in Solon, and while there were awkward moments aplenty (ever been to a wedding, by yourself, when everyone you know there is in the wedding party and busy busy busy?), eventually things got more casual and I had a good time that night, eating and drinking and spending time with old friends.

The next morning I had breakfast with Carol and her boyfriend, and once they were off to work, I cruised back up to the airport and started the return trip.   Considering how incredibly fast the whole weekend was, it was a very relaxing couple of days.

I will always have fond memories of Iowa City.  It’s the place I built a life for myself.  I’ll never forget getting dropped off at my friends’ apartment on Burlington in the summer of ‘96.  We unloaded all my earthly possessions from a rental van into the spare bedroom, my mom wrote me a check for $500.00 to get me started, and I was pretty much on my own for the first time.  By and large, I think everything turned out pretty good. 

With a characteristic focus on speculative politics, Ken MacLeod’s The Night Sessions (2009) posits a world in which “the Faith Wars,” which commenced with the 9/11 attacks and the US military response, continued well beyond our present to an ultimate eradication of religious terrorism worldwide. Indeed, secularist thought has won the day, church and state have been unequivocally separated…and while believers still exist, they do so quietly, on the fringes of society.  Until, one day, an explosion in Edinburgh, Scotland takes the life of an innocent priest, followed shortly thereafter by the assassination of a bishop.  Are these deaths connected, and if so, what do they portend?

These are the questions posed  at the beginning of the novel, which opens as an effective near-future police procedural, and later escalates into an intriguing thriller conspiracy centered on some big SF ideas.  If the concept of a world dominated by rational secularism and scientific thought, and lacking in religious extremism, strikes you as absurd…well, I had similar reservations going in.  But MacLeod makes the concept work, as a thought experiment at least.  Could the world ever reach this particular place?  I’m cynical, of course, but it’s worth the disbelief-suspension to consider the idea, and at any rate MacLeod’s novel suggests that were it to happen, it would hardly solve all our problems.

Unsurprisingly, this involved political backdrop is at center stage of the novel’s futurism, raising questions of religious faith from various perspectives.  But there’s also plenty of intriguing SFnal speculation about artificial intelligence and the integration of robots with human society, not to mention lots of great futurismic telecom gizmos, and Big Idea developments like space elevators and giant orbital technology for regulating climate change that play their part in this detailed future as well.  It all adds up to a quickly read, thought-provoking novel, effective as both mystery and science fiction.

For weeks now I’ve been meaning to write up a comprehensive review of all the random TV shows I’ve been sampling and, in some cases, following over the last several months.   But the longer I procrastinated, the longer the blog post threatened to be, and the hypothetical task of writing it just got too daunting.

Then I hit on a solution to the problem, that’s probably more entertaining anyway.  So here are some TV review haikus (accompanied with how much of the show I’ve watched, and my letter grade):

30 ROCK (1st two seasons, A)
There was all this hype
So I finally watched this
Tina Fey kicks ass

BETTER OFF TED (Several random episodes, C-)
All the elements
Of a funny, funny show
Without much funny

THE BIG BANG THEORY (1st two seasons, B+)
Nerds and a hot girl
Geekdom in all its glory
This show speaks to me

BONES (A few random epidodes, C)
Procedural stuff
Good chemistry from the leads
Hooked me it did not

CASTLE (1st season, C+)
Fillion and fam
Are better than the rest of
This routine cop show

CHUCK (1st season, A-)
What a dumb premise
But Zachary Levi rules
A smart funny ride

DEADLIEST CATCH (Several random episodes, B)
Reality shows
Make me want to hurl, mostly
But look — boats and crabs!

DEFYING GRAVITY (1st two episodes, D-)
Astronauts go out
To do scientific stuff
But are pawns of fate

DEXTER (1st two seasons, A)
Serial killer
So impressively acted
Fucking compelling

DR. WHO (Numerous random episodes, C)
Tennant is a goof
A campy, uneven spoof
I remain aloof

DROP DEAD DIVA (2 random episodes, D+)
It’s Freaky Friday
Skinny mind in fat body
Way too on the nose

GLEE (the pilot, A-)
Music hurt my ears
Delightfully subversive
I’m oddly hopeful

PUSHING DAISIES (1st season, B)
Died before its time
A clever, colorful romp
Still, no Wonderfalls

RESCUE ME (1st four seasons, A)
Macho jackasses
Are secretly soft-hearted
Hilarious shit

THE RICHES (1st four episodes, B)
Gypsy con artists
Impersonate dead rich folk
Pretty good so far

TORCHWOOD (Several random episodes, C-)
Soap opera team
Saves Wales from oblivion
But I just can’t care

TRUE BLOOD (1st season, C+)
Ooh sexy vampires
Aren’t they bad and raunchy?
Buffy, save me please!

WAREHOUSE 13 (1st two episodes, C-)
Low budget sci-fi
Artifacts in a building
Derivative stuff

WEEDS (1st four seasons, B+)
Entitled people
Do appalling things, really
Edgy and witty

Kind of a cheat, but it gets the job done.  Have you seen any of these shows?

My latest new music purchase:  Integration (2009), the fourth studio album by Seattle-based band Kultur Shock.  I have a thing for bands that mash disparate influences into something unique, and Kultur Shock totally fits that bill, blending a number of styles and genres in their music.  Its band members range from Bosnia, Bulgaria, Indonesia, and the United States, and it draws liberally from all its many cultural backgrounds, plus.  The best nutshell description I saw categorizes their music as “Balkan punk rock gypsy metal.”  But really it’s more than that…every track in their library has the capacity to surprise.

Integration is a solid addition to the Kultur Shock discography, although it didn’t quite blow me away the way a couple of its earlier albums did.  I was put off a bit by tracks that contain some hillbilly, country-sounding licks, like “King” and “Country Mohammad,” and the slow-moving “Rose” just isn’t my cup of tea.  But for the most part the album connected with me, thanks to the intricate rhythms and complicated melodies of “Balchannalia” (pick of the album, for me), driving, powerful tunes like “Guerilla,” “Holy Day,” and “Words,” and the epic prog-punk of “Gore Gore.”

It’s probably not for everybody — hell, just about every music review I write could include that disclaimer! — but if it sounds interesting, sample a few tracks.  Integration might be a good gateway album leading back to  their early stuff.

It’s that time again…time to realize that another month has vanished on me!  And of course that means a new story at Futurismic:  stop by and read James Trimarco’s “Glassface,” and let us know what you think!

Speaking of time flying, it occurred to me — albeit a bit late — that Futurismic has been publishing its monthly stories (with, uh, some scheduling hiccups) for five years now, and the publication of “Homeostasis” by Carlos Hernandez last month marked our 50th story!  It’s probably not the most impressive track record in SF short fiction pubishing history, but hey, I think I can give us a “not bad” on that one. 

This morning I made my first visit to a Laemmle independent theater in far too long.  Imagine a two-hour episode of The Office – the original BBC version — but taking place in the corridors of the political world, where virtually all the characters are David Brent….or worse.  That should give you a vague idea, anyway, of the tone of the scathing satire In the Loop (2009), a disturbingly funny dark comedy skewering political incompetence and rapacious ambition in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.  Jumping the pond between the U.K. and the U.S., the film is a fast-paced, profane, and depressingly realistic farce of short-sighted behavior in London and Washington.

An offhand remark by a clueless MP (an impressively befuddled Tom Hollander) accidentally puts him on the political map as a hawk in favor of military intervention in the Middle East.  Soon he finds himself maneuvered like a chess piece, with the help of allies and enemies alike, into the political quagmire of a U.N. war vote.    It’s a comedy of errors…and greed…and idiocy…and, ultimately, tragedy.

We all know the story; now there’s a film that encapsulates how many of us feel about it.  In the Loop is a brilliant satire, bleakly funny and occasionally hilarious, a clever look at how savage, brutal politicians manipulated their less sharp colleagues — and each other — into the mess of Middle East policy in the 21st century.  The film is very nicely cast, with  Peter Capaldi (as foul-mouthed warmonger Malcolm Tucker), Hollander, and Chris Addison (as nakedly ambitious noob aide Toby Wright) dominating the British action, while Anna Chlumsky, James Gandolfini, and David Rasche are perfectly cast for the Americans.  A special shout-out goes to the scene-stealing Zach Woods, who is brilliantly shallow and self-serving as Chad, an aspiring political sycophant.

If there’s a problem with In the Loop, it’s an underlying sense of “preaching to the choir” — kind of to be expected in this kind of thing, I guess.  But for those in its frame of mind, it’s a very effective film, consistently funny throughout before ultimately twisting to its inevitably sad resolution.  An impressive film of savvy and bitter commentary.