Christopher East

While Christmas shopping before our vacation travels, I stumbled across a one-shot magazine from American History titled 100 Greatest Spy Movies and thought it would make for great airplane reading material.  My copy of this “special collector’s edition” magazine is already beat up, dog-earred and scribbled on.  I love spy movies (as if you haven’t guessed!) and this list of films (plus a few mini-series) made me nostalgic to see some of my favorites again, as well as introducing me to a number of titles I’d never even heard of.

Obsessive that I am, I just added as many of these films as I could locate to my Netflix queue — sadly, sixteen were unavailable, pretty much skewering my plan to review them in reverse/countdown order.  Even so, I decided I’d go ahead with the project as a happy excuse to watch and re-watch some of my favorite genre films.  I’ll probably start this next month and work on it gradually (over the next few years, I expect), tagging the posts with a “Spy 100″ sub-category.  So, stay tuned!  Or, you know, if you hate spy movies, change the channel, I suppose!

When I read The Atrocity Archives a few years ago, it instantly became my favorite Charles Stross novel to-date*, an inventive and clever conflation of occult horror and espionage.  So I was looking forward to its sequel, The Jennifer Morgue, which continues the saga of reluctant techie-espiocrat Bob Howard, who this time finds himself dragged into adventurous fieldwork in the Caribbean, where a deranged industrialist is threatening to unleash a powerful, otherworldly weapon from the depths of the ocean.  Can Howard, paired (in the most intrusive way imaginable) with a beautiful, inhuman assassin, thwart the plot?

Alas, I found myself not terribly interested in the answer to that question.  I usually love Stross’ work, but oddly The Jennifer Morgue just didn’t do much for me.  Although, as usual, it possesses Stross’ distinctive voice and impressively casual creativity, for some reason the book missed the mark for me.  The author’s confident rants and diversions felt more distracting than compelling, and I suspect the recursive James Bond story structure rubbed me the wrong way (I’ve never been a big 007 fan).  And it could well be that I’ve read so many spy novels since The Atrocity Archives that my sensibilities in this area have changed, and a concept that originally struck me as a successful fusion of two genres, here just seemed like a novel with a split focus, half-successful with each element.

For all this negativity, I suspect that for most regular Stross readers, The Jennifer Morgue will deliver the desired reading experience.  For whatever reason, though, I found this one curiously unengaging.

* It’s since been supplanted in my memory by the impressive far future SF novel Glasshouse.

A few brief viewing notes from the past week or so:

I meant to write up a full review of the film Hero (2002) when I watched it last weekend, but the trip swept in I never managed to finish it.  It’s a spectacular film, an exciting martial arts epic with Jet Li and Maggie Cheung about the birth of China, with incredible visuals (the use of color is particularly striking) and rousing action sequences.  Not having seen it in the theater, I’m very glad I at least got to see this on Blu-ray — that extra level of definition really pays off for movies like this one.  Highly recommended.

While we were on our holiday trip, Jenn and I caught up with and finished off season three of 30 Rock.  I didn’t find it as strong as season two, but it’s still a fun show, and I really like Tina Fey.

We also watched a bunch of episodes of Leverage from season one, a  series that’s really growing on me.  While at first I found the premise conspicuously derivative, I like how Leverage is working character and comedy into its mission/heist mix.  I particularly like Aldis Hodge and Christian Kane here, but the entire cast is solid.  I’ll probably hang around for this one.

Finally, during the longer legs of our flight out and back, I finally watched season two of Ricky Gervais’ Extras on my laptop.  In this one, Gervais (of the original BBC series The Office) creates another bleak, behavior-based comedy of awkward situations, this time about a struggling actor (Gervais) who works his way into the acting business doing background work before finally landing a speaking role.  I’m guessing Gervais’ sense of humor won’t work for everybody, but it really connects with me.  Stephen Merchant is particularly funny as Gervais’ incompetent agent, and there are some hilarious celebrity cameos from Daniel Radcliffe and Ian McKellen, among others.

Like a lot of people, I’ve been offline and a bit out of touch for the past week, away from work and enjoying a much-needed vacation!  Jenn and I had a nice couple of days last weekend to relax together, then flew out to Buffalo (via Burbank and JFK) to spend Christmas with my family in Fredonia.  Since last year’s travel plans fell apart spectacularly (bite me, Southwest!), we were worried about the winter storms on the Atlantic seaboard, but the weather cooperated perfectly for us.  All of our flights left on time and arrived early.  (Had we left a day earlier, we probably would have been screwed.)  Plus, no LAX (always a bonus)!  Of course the tickets were bloody expensive, but overall it was a pretty good travel experience.

Christmas in Fredonia (my first in three years) was quiet and relaxing, with unusually dull weather — some snow on the ground but no precipitation during the trip except rain and a brief flurry.  We stayed holed up at home most of the time, playing games and spending time with the family.  (Hey fellow Fredonians, sorry I missed you if you were in town!)

The trip was full of fantastic eating, including some East Family classics:  sesame noodles, lasagna, great desserts, and our traditional Christmas grub:  cinnamon rolls, Yorkshire pudding, and prime rib.  And I think I drank more coffee last week than I usually do, which is really saying something.  As for Christmas loot, I got some great stuff:  new spy novels, DVDs, some nice shirts, and more.

I also managed to finish a new tune over the break; Jenn challenged me to write a Christmas song, but my attempt failed profoundly and morphed into a funky-Latin TV theme, “High Security,” about an elderly security guard who’s secretly a crime-fighting bad-ass.  The “holiday bells” percussion loop that inspired the song ultimately landed on the cutting room floor.

Our plane left at Godawful O’Clock in the Morning a couple days ago and we stayed up most of the night streaming shows so we wouldn’t miss our plane.  It made for an exhausting couple of days, but we made it home fine and it feels good to be back, with a  little time to relax and readjust before getting back to work.

Here are a few Christmas photos to send off the season.  Hope everyone’s had a great holiday-of-their-choice!

Jenn & I at Lake Erie

White Christmas

Buzzy!

Not much to report here, except that I’m on vacation for the first time in months, and boy does it feel good….

In the spirit of the holidays, I’m giving away more (not even remotely seasonal) GarageBand music.  The first three are a few of my favorites from Episodic, and the fourth one is new.

System Ops

Shirley Holmes, P.I.

Ghostwalk

Late Night at the City Desk

Hope you enjoy the tunes, and I hope everyone is having a great December!

Episodic is complete! Or as complete as anything you compose on your computer can be…you know the old saying, “Writing is never finished, it is only abandoned…” I could probably tweak and modify and re-level these songs forever, if I wanted to improve them.  But I’m determined not to turn a fun hobby into hard work, so the hell with that — they’re done!

Below is a downloadable sample tune, based around a particularly infectious GB3 bass loop and layered with groovy beats and effects:

Soul Patch

I am having so much fun with this program, and with the whole song-building process.  Both my music theory and my keyboarding skills are pretty basic, so I let the pre-programmed loops do a lot of the work. But I feel like I’m getting more adventurous with the melody lines and loops I’m playing myself, and then layering on copious amounts of percussion and texture to give it some personality.  I also think some of these tunes have a pretty good sense of humor.

Episodic is a twenty-song collection of theme songs from TV shows that never existed. Here’s the tracklist:

1. Murdocke & Scorch
2. Miami Splice
3. El Fido vs. the Chimp
4. Inside Con
5. Emperor Ming Shakes His Thing
6. Soul Patch
7. Junkyard Cats
8. Side Streets
9. System Ops
10. (Gettin’) Down in the Crypt
11. The Manufactory
12. Bloodsky Clan
13. Shirley Holmes, P.I.
14. Whirley Byrd
15. Robot Makes Five
16. Area 54
17. Pawn Shop
18. The Fixer
19. Learning is Fun at the David Lynch Preschool
20. Ghostwalk

Maybe I’ll post more songs later if people are interested.  Hope you like “Soul Patch!”

Film auteurs with impressive artistic track records often seem to get away with things that other directors can’t, the relaxed oversight afforded by their names making for more indulgent film-making.  Such is the case, I think,  with Spike Lee in his recent WWII epic, Miracle at St. Anna (2008), which I found to be an interesting, flawed, and yet powerful movie.  It’s a structural mess, and I felt at first that it needed a ruthless editor…but I’m also kind of glad it didn’t get one, for however imperfect the film may be, I suspect it’s much more interesting for being so all over the place.

Based on a novel by James McBride (who also scripted), Miracle at St. Anna tells the story of four soldiers — played by Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, and Omar Miller Benson, all very good — from one of the first black combat units to serve in the U.S. Army.  The four men get trapped behind enemy lines during an aborted offensive into northern Italy in 1944.  Surrounded by German forces, the unit finds itself torn in several different directions:  by a young, shellshocked boy who befriends them, by the local Italian civilians, by their own distant, bigoted white officers, and by the anti-fascist partisans in the area.

It all adds up, if somewhat clumsily, to a tragic tale of heroism and sacrifice, with some real heart to it.  But oh, how many problems I had with it along the way.  The largest issue is that it seems to be trying to be too many films at once:  an action epic, a flashback mystery, a love triangle, a tragic history lesson, and a tale of spying and betrayal, among others.   The film shifts gears constantly, with the central heroes disappearing from the stage for long, momentum-killing side plots, unexpected tangents to the German and partisan points of view…there’s a flashback framing device connecting the men to a crime committed in 1983…a flashback within a flashback to the unit’s training…you get the idea.  It’s all connected, which is all to the good, and most of it even amounts to something, but the elements are joined pretty haphazardly.

Lee’s visual sense is as distinctive as ever, and if there are a few self-consciously artsy, slow motion shots trying too hard, there are also plenty of striking images and gorgeous vistas.  Most welcome is the forgotten history of the film:  indeed, steeped as I am in World War II lore, the broader texts don’t generally tell you much about the Buffalo Soldiers who served in combat (certainly central to Lee’s interest), nor do they focus on the late 1944 campaigning in northern Italy (largely dealt with as a sideshow to the France invasion, historically).  The politics and the historical detail — from the attitudes of the war-weary Italian civilians, to the fatalistic German soliders struggling to take their adamant, deluded officers seriously, to the racism in the American armed forces — all feels very authentic and accurate.  Lee tends to pound home his racial message with a heavy, blunt instrument at times, but it doesn’t make that message any less important or necessary.  At the same time, it’s unfortunate that a film so concerned with equality would so dismissively treat its female characters — represented chiefly by Valentina Cervi, as an Italian civilian who becomes a divisive love triangle point among the men, one of the film’s less necessary subplots.  Sadly, this isn’t that uncommon in war films, but you would hope for more here.

So yes, there’s a lot going on in this one — ultimately, I think too much — but some of it is quite good, and its many odd choices make it a consistently surprising and interesting film.  Moreover, it’s winningly heartfelt, and I have to admit that it’s final moments got me.  Obviously with reservations, but I’d recommend it, especially for history buffs.

Yesterday morning was cold and overcast (a true rarity in southern California!) so it felt like a good day for Drag Me to Hell (2009), the recent Sam Raimi chiller that looked like a “return to roots” project with an old-fashioned creepy feature vibe.

The story follows a bank loan officer, Christine Brown (Alison Lohman),   a young woman struggling for respect both at home and at work, where she denies a mortgage extension to a creepy old woman.  The woman responds by placing a curse on Christine, and what follows is a gruesome and thoroughly predictable shockfest, as she’s tormented and terrorized by vicious evil spirits that want to…well, see the title.

The horror movie genre is one that I always tend to go into with lowered expectations, so it never ceases to amaze me that, despite that, they still almost invariably disappoint me.  The best thing I can say about Drag Me to Hell is that it’s the kind of movie I’d have loved to see if it had been made by Alfred Hitchcock in, say, 1961.  Indeed, the film opens with an old-school film-making feel that I found winning in the early-going, but subsequent sequences stomp all over that refreshing vibe, as the sight gags (and I use the word “gags” literally) and familiar gorey gross-out effects push the film into Comically Stupid territory.  Lohman gamely does everything the script asks of her, and the acting is generally well done, but ultimately this one was another horror dud for me — never truly scary or even interesting, and not entirely certain whether to take itself seriously.  Not bad enough to be truly good, this one might be an enjoyable diversion if you’re predisposed to this kind of thing, but for me it was a pretty forgettable piece of business.

It feels like time for a catch-up post of random odds and ends…aka, a post that isn’t strictly a review of something or about Futurismic. 

• For the last couple of months I’ve been feeling even more cautious than usual about money — staying in on weekends, not eating out, limiting my casual spending, etc.  All of this kind of in anticipation of the holiday financial crush, I suspect.  It feels a little like it’s translated into being antisocial, too, but that certainly wasn’t my intention.
• That said, we did get out last week for a blissfully relaxed Thanksgiving potluck at Jenn’s studio.  There I got my first experience playing Rock Band, and I have to say, it’s fun but I don’t think I’d buy it for myself.  Interestingly, I seemed to be better at the drums than the bass!
• On Sunday Jenn and I went to the Burbank Ikea and bought an inexpensive bookshelf for the bedroom.  For the second time in a year, we built furniture together without driving each other crazy.  Is that normal?
• A final thumbs-up on Uncharted 2:  Among Thieves, an exciting and beautifully rendered action video game that seems destined to become a movie starring Nathan Fillion.
• My GarageBand obsession continues, and Episodic now has 19 songs — almost complete!  I’m starting to feel like I’m butting up against the limits of my composing ability, unfortunately, but this is less depressing than a “writing plateau” since I have no professional aspirations here.  So far my favorites are my alien dance club tune “Area 54,” and the warped slow jazz of “Learning is Fun at the David Lynch Preschool.”
• Speaking of music, a recent windfall of iTunes gift cards enabled me to spend without spending recently, and I’m now stocked up with new albums from Angelspit, Fishbone, Mike Keneally, and Tipsy, plus a couple of artists new to me:  Steroid Maximus and Zu.

I think that about covers it for now; keeping busy, and largely happy!  I’m working up to doing a “year-in-writing” post later this month, which I feel like I should be dreading more, since this really wasn’t a great year for me professionally.  And yet, in other ways I feel pretty good about how writing went this year.  Anyway, more to come!

The next stop on my international film tour takes us to Romania, for 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (2007), a hard-hitting film set in the late 1980s about two young students (Anamaria Marinca and Laura Vasiliu) who are forced to go to great lengths to arrange an abortion for one of them, which is highly illegal in this severe, oppresive communist society.

There’s little need to go further into plot summary than that, really.  This is a difficult film to watch, which isn’t at all to say that it’s bad; rather, it’s highly effective at depicting its unnerving society and the bleak plight of its characters.  The film paints a stark, realistic picture of what it’s like to be powerless in an oppressive, dictatorial regime, where every human interaction involves suspicious give-and-take, and this leads to highly uncomfortable dramatic suspense throughout as the characters are forced to move through their day-to-day lives like undercover agents in their own country.  Marinca in particular gives a brave and powerful performance, and there’s effective support from the rest of the cast.  This one isn’t particularly enjoyable to watch, but it’s hard not to respect as powerful film-making, an unsettling glimpse of a world we should never have to live in.