Post-Apocalyptic Mythology Part 1: What is worth holding onto in the vast wasteland?

When the world ends our trash will become treasures. Things that seem so important to daily life will no longer be of value, and things that we forgot or threw away will be gold. So when the world is over what is important? The film "The book of Eli" attempts to answer that question. The main character has a pack that he refuses to part with, and perhaps on the surface level that pack is important because of the titular book it holds. However, that pack is important for many more reasons beyond the book. Eli's livelihood is within that pack. Every character has objects that are of extreme importance in this post-apocalyptic world. So what would you need?

Of the three characters who remember the world before their needs vary greatly. The villain needs weapons, of all types. He is a collector of gasoline, armored cars, and fast vehicles. He has his own army well equip with bullets which are exceedingly rare, and has a town at his disposable trapped by his hidden water cache (which is what is most desired by all people). But despite all this power and wealth, he is desperately looking for the one weapon which he needs most. The female from the before times only needs her daughter's safety. Finally, Eli has a few possessions which he treats with religious devotion. First is his iPod, which seems to be the only way he sleeps at night. Second, his machete which is cleaned and sharpened with the same care one gives a lover. And lastly, of course, is his book, the sole reason for his existence.

This is a culture stores that puts the highest price on things like soaps, lip balm, and shampoo. Lighters are a dime a dozen, but nice clothing is hard to get. Guns are carried without bullets and most people travel by foot as gas is only for the powerful. Everything is hoarded with the hopes of a good trade, if for nothing else, for water. However, the two main characters who were not from the before time require less tangible things. The main henchman just wants a woman, and the main girl desires anything more than she has. It is not things she needs but ideas. Her hopeless world is too empty for her.

This post-apocalyptic world is complex and interesting. It shows the human interactions in the trade, theft, and gifting of possessions, which may not be necessary for life, but are for living.

I give the entire tale a 4 out of 5.

Holding tightly onto her beloved book,
J.R. West the Raccoon

Images of Beowulf Part 2: Animation Creation

The 2007 Beowulf movie directed by Robert Zemeckis is a computer generated animation film. The film endeavored to be different in both story and animation style. It takes liberty with the plot of the original Beowulf legend under the guise of portraying the "truth" behind the epic; assuming that the old English version is an oral tale that was distorted with time. The film is built on the idea that no man is perfect and the "real" Beowulf was flawed. This premise proves interesting, since literary the Beowulf was nearly perfect. I think that this assumption improves the story greatly, since the traditional tales of how Kings are remembered are rarely synonymous with not how they truly were. Furthermore, many of the side characters give the movie an unexpected depth, especially the Queen, who survived three corrupt rulers. She was one of the only genuinely good characters and a true pleasure to watch.

However, even though the story was enjoyable, the animation was not. In an attempt at realism, the 3D computer animation mimics real people, using actors as models and then animating over. This tactic failed. The main characters felt fake, with the stress on realism becoming a distraction. Instead of falling into the world of the film, every flaw in the recreation of the actors kept the view at arm's length. Moreover, the side characters are caricatures of people that barely fit in the world created. While the animation failed in its portrayal of people, the monsters were fantastic. Both Grendel's and the dragon's forms were a blend of the expected and the creative. Grendel is a humanoid with a unique physical feature that clearly explains his hatred for humans, in contrast with Grendel's mother who is a modern portrait of the perfect feminine form. She is curvaceous with gentle and delicate hands. Her monstrous feet and tail are reminiscent of a Judeo-Christian demon. She is clearly a Lilith type creature, as referenced in the original tale, beautiful and deadly. If only the majority of the film could have focused on the monsters, it might have been spectacular.

Since it did not, I give the animation a 2 out of 5 and the story a 3.5 out of 5.

Still waiting to be impressed by Beowulf,
J.R. West the Raccoon

Who Watches the Watchmen? If You've Read the Comic You Should

I had the great joy of watching the movie "Watchmen". As a huge fan of the comic, my anticipation was quite high. Would Rorschach still be an absolutist who saw interesting things in ink blots? Would Ozymandias still be like his namesake? Would Manhattan be larger than life? The previews were interesting, but not enough to tell if Alan Moore's vision would be preserved by director Zack Snyder. Luckily, I was not disappointed.

In the previews Nite Owl II looked young and hip, however I was pleasantly surprised when his human ego did not stand out, and was still impotent (a symbol of his life without being the Nite Owl. his actor pulled over the emotion needed for his character. Ozymandias was less like his namesake, and more of Alexander the Great. But that did not hurt the movie. Dr. Manhattan was as aloof and amazing as I hoped. His clock on Mars was cg masterpiece. Rorschach was brilliantly insane, he was who I expected. Gritty and passionate. I loved watching the scenes when he did not have his face on. Of course, reading the comic I knew who he was, but it was a thrill anyway. Even seeing the newsstand guy with the boy reading the comic was perfect. Though their subplot was not included in the movie, it was a friendly reminder that the comic book is out there.

The ending surprised me. It is where the major deviation occurred. I will not spoil it for those who have and haven't read the comic. I would like to say that the deviation did not bother me. The heart of the comic was kept. Actually, most of the movie was the comic frame for frame. I was able to compare what I saw on the screen to what I read. Even Dr. Manhattan's habit for not wearing clothing (some friends have complained about the presence of his large blue manhood). Many of the characters looked like their counterparts, even the President copied his comic caricature instead of a realistic Nixon. Overall the look was persevered.

The movie itself was a visual joy. The transition from paper to movie kept the grizzly images juxtaposed with the bright colors. The current technology allowed for the world of "Watchmen" to be what fans expected. Dr. Manhattan was the god the comic made him. The fight scenes were incredible and Ozymandias was the perfect human by the grace of movie magic.

I was very please and cannot wait to own the movie. I give it a 5 out of 5.

Watching Watchmen,
J.R. West the Raccoon

Titania: The First Scene!

Dear readers,

Those of you who have been reading us a while know that we have been following the work of writer and director Lisa Stock and her talented cast of actors as they have launched their project, Titania, the first in a trilogy of independent films addressing the journey of a woman through fairy tale and mythological motifs. The film weaves together elements of The Divine Comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the fairy tale of the "armless maiden."

So - some exciting news - the first scene has been filmed! There is an almost symphonic artistry to the colors, the light, the music, and the acting -- it is quite magical. Watch it here, and please leave comments and tell us what you think.

Other things you might like to check out:

* a behind-the-scenes featurette on the making of Titania, available in the May 2008 issue of Dante's Heart.

* you can also visit the official website for Titania.

* a trailer for another project of Lisa Stock's - Brother and Sister - a short film adaptation of a haunting poem by Terri Windling:

do you remember, brother
those days in the wood
when you ran with the deer
falling bloody on my doorstep at dusk
stepping from the skin
grateful to be a man . . .

(You can read the rest of the poem here, in the archives of the Endicott Studio.)

The Spirit: Yay for movies coming out on Christmas

Hitting the theaters on Christmas Day was The Spirit by Frank Miller. Based on Will Eisner's comic, The Spirit followed a long trend of comic book movies. Like its predecessors, The Spirit takes basic ideas from many of the comics and tries to make a single cohesive story. In The Spirit's case, the idea is success. However, the plot is a basic film noir, who did what and why story. It is not exceptional, and not worth the price to see it in the theaters. However, The Spirit is not just a film noir. It's not even mostly a film noir. It is a neo noir comedy. It is held together by great lines and absurd situations.

At first glance The Spirit is a Sin City copy. A comic book style done in a semi-black and white, with color accents. However, The Spirit does not try to nor does it feel at all like Sin City. They may share a conceptual cinematography, but that is all. The Spirit takes the 40's feel, the decade in which the comic first appeared in newspapers. The character the Spirit is a skirt chaser that uses it to his advantage and it is endearing. He is not greasy or scheming when he does it. He is just a masked man in his decade. The look and feel reminds me of classic Batman, dark and beautiful. The costumes are beautiful, reminding me of a golden age. Frank Miller takes the time period and his unique style and gives the movie a classic noir feel that works in this decade.

The Spirit is not for the serious. The villain is so over the top he is beyond the moon. Samuel L. Jackson is the only person who could play a psychotic genius with such results. He is hilariously crazy with some great lines. The one liners from most of the characters makes the movie side splitting. Do not expect the serious scenes to dominate. This mixed genre movie is carried by the humor.

I'd recommend seeing it, if you are a fan of movies that do not follow conventional genre rules.

Overall I'd give it a 3.5 out of 5.

Merry Christmas (or just happy December if you do not celebrate the holiday),
J.R West the Raccoon

Mythology in Wall-E

Disney Pixar's Wall-E clearly falls within the realm of science fiction. It is in Earth's future with robots and space ships. There are both humorous and even villainous AI (Artificial Intelligence) in the form of both computers and robots. Yet, mythology is deeply entrenched into the film.

In the beginning there are only two "people" on Earth. They are responsible for populating the Earth. They are the EVE and Adam (Wall-E) of the future Earth. EVE is the mother of the new Earth. She finds and protects Earth's signs of life in her robotic womb. It is her actions that put humans on the planet.

Additionally, the humans are men in the cave. The Captain of the ship can only see the Shadows of Earth life on the wall screen. However, even his Shadows are far more complex than what the rest of humanity sees. They have just the screens on their chairs, that give them Shadows of their cave, which they don't even know about. It is Wall-E who leads them from the cave, who lets them see the 3-D world, not Shadows on the screen.

In another sense, the robots are Gods, powerful beings who watch over humans. Not all are viewed as benevolent (just as not all gods are), but they all work to keep humans alive. They bring Knowledge and farming skills to the nearly Earthbound humans (as seen during the credits). They are the creators of the world.

Wall-E, like most science fiction, uses mythology to tell a futuristic story. And the future and the past are not so different in this film.

Looking for Mythology around every corner,
J.R. West the Raccoon

Twilight: The Movie

Until a few days ago I didn't know any of Stephenie Meyer's novels, so I have not read them, and have not even noticed that much the raging tides of fandom around them. But my wife and I watched Twilight in the theater a few nights ago, and I have to admit, I'm impressed. It's a romantic and delightfully moody film, with beautiful cinematography and visual poetry. While the plot can be quite predictable (with all the expected motifs of the teen romance), there are innovative and often breathtaking touches that I have not seen before. I was almost tired of vampires, actually, and am delighted to see them back with some refreshing newness. There was a vampire baseball game that was especially thrilling -- baseball becomes a more...vigorous...sport when played by supernatural predators who move faster than Nascar champions.

For me, the movie held a special nostalgia, as it was set in western Washington where I grew up. (If you are not from that part of the world, think Snow Falling On Cedars.) Ah, the greenery and the fog and the twilight rain and the moody land and the moody sea, and the moody people. I think I knew just about everyone in the movie. That part of the world mildews itself into your body and your blood and never leaves.

And Twilight even had me nostalgic for the Mariners.

So I definitely recommend the film - it was beautifully made, and makes me want to go get a copy of the book.

Watchmen: The Movie (March 2009)

I am afraid I haven't been nearly as vigorous in blogging lately, due to some complications surrounding wisdom teeth. (I am taking those teeth out perhaps a few years later than I should have.) But, while I am convalescent and having little to do or little thoughtful to add to a blog, let me just give a cheer for the upcoming Watchmen movie, based on Alan Moore's graphic novel, forthcoming in just seven months (huzzah!):



That is something to cheer about. I am hoping the film does the graphic novel justice.

Who watches the watchmen?

I would offer some savvy review here if I were not on painkillers. But I do want to celebrate what a beautiful work of art this trailer itself is. Look at it. The execution is flawless, the fitting of music to visuals is breathtaking in its perfection, as finely crafted as watchwork. The remixing of the Smashing Pumpkins lyrics is particularly inspired: at times nonsensical, yet terribly evocative:

Send a heartbeat to
The void that cries through you....

And in your darkest hour, I hold secrets' flame,
You can watch the world devoured in its pain

What moody beauty! And how true to Watchmen's sardonic look at the darker side to patriotism and the longing for heroes.

I think mood is a large part of the beauty of Watchmen, which can be at times relentlessly dark, and yet rich with hope and affirmation of humanity. One of my favorite quotations from the book:

"Thermodynamic miracles...events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter...until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air into gold...that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle."

"But...if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle...I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!"

"Yes. Anybody in the world. But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget...I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take our breath away. Come, dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly."

That is something to think about.

World War Z: The Movie (2010)

Dear readers, I have some news! It is news to me, and it may or may not be news to you. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, the shockingly good journalism/horror thriller by Max Brooks (Mel Brooks' son) is being adapted into a movie - slated to arrive in theaters sometime in 2010. Brooks' novel documents humanity's struggle to survive raving hordes of the undead, through a series of recorded interviews with survivors - and provides savvy commentary on cultural and economic politics along the way. The book's twists and turns are surprising, thoughtful and dramatic, and the zombie horror is compelling and wildly imaginative. (Having a lifelong phobia of the walking, moaning dead, I could not sleep soundly for days. Imagine hunting through the pitch-black sewers beneath Paris for submerged, hungry zombies, and if that doesn't chill you, then I can't help you see the charms of Max Brooks' work.)

The book is being adapted for film by Michael Straczynski, one of the top writers for the television science fiction series Babylon 5. Here is an excerpt from an early review of the script at CinemaBlend.com:

I love this script. Love every dark, somber, upsetting page of it. There’s a story about black market organs that is just brutal, an off-the-record conversation with a CIA friend, and an insane beach sequence that I can’t wait to see on film. All in the first 50 pages.

You can read more about the script here. You can also read a review of the book here, in Issue 1 of Dante's Heart. Finally, an interview with the author about the upcoming film is available here.

Moments of Wonder in Computer Animated Scenes

Computer animation has something of a bad rep, a stigma it must fight. Everyone remembers Jar Jar Binks. But ah, what a tool our new visual technologies can be in the hands of an artist or a great director - someone who understands how to evoke wonder not just for the sake of startling or amazing the viewer, but wonder at just the right moment to break the story open in some new way...especially if combined with powerful music, or powerful acting, or powerful dialogue. I want to write a quick post here with a few of my favorite moments, to celebrate some moments in the past few years when the computer animators and the storytellers came together to make us gasp...and feel.

First prize among those that come first to mind tonight is the opening of The Two Towers...the stirring music, the sweeping camera view over an ice-cold mountain ridge as the sounds of terrible battle slowly become audible, then the moment that makes it all: that long meteoric fall into a lake within the earth, while a daunting choir laments in our ears. That is wonder-work; that is film-making. (After all, what did we all set down our books a few moments and go to the movies for, if not in hope of such moments of wonder as that?)



Now for Number 2 - the critical scene in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children - the return of the villain, Sephiroth, whom the heroes had thought put away forever. Three things I love in this scene, besides the music (did I mention the importance of a great choir?). One: the widening of Cloud's eye when he realizes his enemy is back. How did the animators capture so much emotion in a cartoon eye? In the words of our art editor, who grabbed my arm at that moment in the movie, "You see that look? That's consciousness!"

Two: Sephiroth's lines. This is the kind of villain that rouses all my boyish horror and admiration. "I want to sail the darkness of the cosmos with this planet as my vessel." That's quite a way to say hello after a long absence. There is dark ambition and a grim majesty to his first lines upon his return.

Three: The grace and menace with which the animators imbued Sephiroth's movements on the screen - especially that moment when he leaps into the ruined tower after Cloud and gets our adrenaline going, sword out, hair flying, at a dead run, moving like some wild god, relentless, self-sufficient, terrible. This is no mindless car chase action scene: there is a grace and dark poetry to the duel.

The Two Towers scene is an example of how to begin a movie right; Advent Children, how to end a movie right. Here's the scene:



And now for a middle from a movie. Not a flawless movie by any means, but a movie with many beautiful scenes. The moment in Big Fish when our hero first sees his beloved so well illustrates the wonder of first love and of love at first sight, which the French used to call le coup de foudre (i.e., being hit by lightning), that I can never forget it. And once more, the storytellers has given us some great lines: "They tell you that when you meet the love of your life, time stops. And that's true. ...What they don't tell you is that once time starts again, it moves extra fast to catch up."



I will end my celebration here, but please add some favorite scenes of your own in the comments. Frankly, the moviemakers are turning out so much special-effects-heavy shlock these days in the name of "fantasy" films that I feel no guilt at all in taking an evening just to throw up my hands and celebrate the real thing, the scenes that moved me, without necessarily offering anything really intelligent to say about any of them. And that's the beauty of a blog, as opposed to a conference or a class or a scholarly publication (although all three of those have their own place and their own beauty). A blogger is allowed a few free moments just to stand up and start cheering. Join me in that!

Titania: The First Shoot!

Titania, the first film in Lisa Stock's Medisaga, just had its first shoot this last week! And Lisa Stock has been kind enough to share photos from the shoot and a brief statement about the scene and the mood of the piece (to read our earlier announcement about the upcoming Titania, which includes a plot synopsis and other information, go here):

Landscapes figure prominently in fairy tales, if not as separate characters themselves. We shot one scene this week on location where we'll shoot the rest of the film in September, giving us the effect of season changes for the film. This scene is a dream sequence in which Titania suddenly sees the landscape of her estate winter laden and stripped bare.


The metaphor is that of clarity - no leaves on the trees to block her view into the forest that haunts her, the sun vibrant and blinding when it comes out from behind the clouds. In the beginning of this scene she lifts a veil as though unveiling the truth - she is starting to put together the pieces of the puzzle, and when she wakes from the dream in the film has strength and insight she didn't have before.
--Lisa Stock

Titania, grounded on this estate after her wings are brutally torn from her body, must soon venture into the dark forest - which sounds like the premise of a great fairy tale or myth in the making. Equal parts poet, visual artist, and storyteller, Lisa Stock is one of the artists who brought us Through the Cobweb Forest and several compelling short films foregrounding the fairy tale as an ideal medium for addressing the issues of the woman's journey through an often hostile world. We are excited to see what happens with Lisa Stock behind the camera with a full cast of actors, her very precise instinct for lighting, music, and mood, and the determination of an artist in whose visions we sense that she has already fought her way through her own forest, to emerge on the other side with wisdom to share. Visit Lisa Stock's Medisaga site for more photographs from the first shoot, as well as other updates and backstory on the making of the film.

Animated Fantasy from the 70s

This generation is growing up with a unique mixture of Schrek on the one side and Princess Mononoke on the other (and, for the very lucky, Spirited Away - a beautiful film). I have been feeling the sting of nostalgia lately. The animated films I remember - I mean the ones that left images in my mind that I could not shake free - were often quite dark, lyrical, equal parts weird and haunting. Weirdest of all, probably, was Ralph Bakshi's Wizards - for years I blocked out the bizarreness of the film (in which a wizard in a radioactive world resurrects the Third Reich for a war of conquest, resulting in a cinematic blend of hallucinatory fairy scenes and raw images of genocide) and remembered only the final scene, the anticlimactic duel between two brother wizards:



See what I mean?

I remain uncertain to this day whether that film was travesty or masterpiece.

I'm less divided in mind about these next clips. The first is from The Last Unicorn, that 70s adaptation of Peter S. Beagle's novel, here depicting the scene at which the aging spinster Molly encounters the unicorn and flies into a rage, demanding to know why the unicorn has come to her in her age when she has no time for unicorns or for nostalgia for lost dreams: "Damn you!" she cries:



Beagle is a remarkable storyteller. What a moment. What would it be like to awaken from the dreariness of life and cooking and struggling to pay the bills and fighting to evict your drunk tenant to glance out the window and see elves dancing in the garden, and to weep because the bills and the tenant leave you no time to dance with them?

This third scene is from Watership Down, based on Richard Adams' novel. This is the closing of the film, with Hazel's beautiful death scene:



I thank you readers for your patience with this vlogging jog down the graylit paths of nostalgia. I have even spared you the very strangest moments - such as the Orcs singing Where There's a Whip, There's a Way! during their march through Mordor in the Rankin/Bass animated musical Return of the King. (Long before I ever read Tolkien's books, I watched that on the television in my father's appliance repair shop, and was haunted for years in my dreams by the red eyes of the stampeding mumakil and by the long fall of Gollum into the burning magma.)

I wish I could define wherein lies the appeal and the uniqueness of the animated fantasy features of the 1970s. Perhaps it is the way that each of these films takes itself deathly seriously and yet not seriously, at the same time. Or maybe it is their bewildering soundtracks. Or the way that in each of these films fantasy and the starkness of what we label the real or the mundane clash in abrupt and sometimes menacing ways. For all their stranger moments, the films and stories of this generation are compelling in their refusal to allow you to take the mundane at face value. And each of them looks at evil without flinching: the evils of genocide and human brutality in Wizards, the evils of obsession and possession in The Last Unicorn, the evils of callousness toward one's neighbors and of the choice of security over liberty in Watership Down. Think of the grandiose failures of several recent and extensively computer-animated fantasy blockbusters (say, The Golden Compass and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) which try to glance at evil and then quickly flinch away. It may be my horror at the timidity of these films that makes me a touch nostalgic for darker work.

But then, unlike the film adaptations of Compass and Narnia, the films I have clipped above were not family features. Possibly I am unfairly comparing apples to oranges, dolls to marionettes. I will cheer up and turn to Pan's Labyrinth.

Titania: A New Project

Dear readers,

I'm in the final stages of my move from one beautifully-sculpted snail shell of a home to another, and I want to drop in with news of an independent film project dealing with myth, which is currently in production. You may recognize the artist & director, Lisa Stock, as one of the authors of The Cobweb Forest - if you had the great fortune to be following that multimedia project last year. If this is your first introduction to Lisa's work, I recommend visiting her site at www.inbytheeye.com.


Titania is the first of three films collectively titled Medisaga, to be followed by Purgatory and Neptune. The first film is a beautiful conflation of A Midsummer Night's Dream and the story of the Armless Maiden. I copy Lisa's description of Titania here:

After having her wings violently torn from her body Titania is confined to the grounds of her estate. Natural law dictates that if she were ever to leave the grounds of her home and venture into the forest she would die -- hunted and slain by the harpies who inhabit the woods. When her son is kidnapped by his father, and no one is able to help, she has no choice but to face her greatest fear and defy the edict that binds her, and keeps her alive.

The stuff of great fairy tales, yes? Lyrical and edgy, the series promises a weaving together of threads of folktale and fairytale and Dante and lived experience. Lisa Stock has generously made a series of screen test video clips available on youtube and (as higher resolution downloads) from her site. Take a look at this visual poetry:



The beauty of the screen test is that we get to see the artist in the midst of her work, her hands still wet from her paint - and the glimpses we catch as those colors come together are beautiful and tantalizing - yet also demanding: both a seduction of and a partnership with the viewer.

The promise of Medisaga is that through the three films, the protagonist "will learn what it takes to finally be whole again," as a woman who has passed through grief, suffering, captivity, loss. It is a project thematically in vein with the earlier Cobweb Forest. Lisa Stock's work recurrently addresses the questions of the woman's journey, recognizing in the heritage of fairy tales, with their feminine protagonists and their examination of the crises of a woman's life, a vehicle for exploring and celebrating the growth of a woman (even as much of modern fantasy fiction and cinema, with its frequent focus on male protagonists and quest narratives, has offered a vehicle for writers to explore the man's coming of age and discovery of masculinity).




I am excited to see the completed films. The work Lisa Stock and her actors and colleagues are doing on this project is all the more considerable when one knows that the woman whose life and thoughts were the key inspiration for the series died during the fall, and the work continues in tribute. For more screen tests, go here, and to support the filming of the Medisaga (no small project) either financially or with eager expressions of interest, go here.

New Arrivals

Disney's Enchanted is in theaters this weekend, and definitely recommended by our editors. Part parody and part inspired homage to Disney's long animated tradition of fairytale romance, Enchanted is clever, outrageously funny, and touching. Also, the scriptwriters get high marks from us: the fact that Disney is not afraid to laugh at itself reminds me of why we as children liked Disney in the first place: they just really have the knack for cinematic fun. The actors are very good, and given the premise of a fairy tale princess exiled by her wicked future mother-in-law to dreary New York ("where there are no happily ever afters") only to find herself falling for a divorce lawyer - well, what's not to like?

A favorite scene of mine: our heroine Giselle wakes to find the lawyer's house an untidy mess. She immediately does what any princess with a grain of sense does: throw open the window and begin calling the animals with her power of song. This is New York, and the sewer rats, cockroaches, and swarms of insects hurry to her aid; unfazed, she sings as she leads them in the housecleaning. The rats scrub the dishes with their tails; the cockroaches devour the scum in the bathrub. It's an inspired scene.

Prince Edward is great for laughs, but unlike his counterpart Prince Charming in the Shrek franchise, Edward is strangely sweet. My favorite line from him: in response to the wicked Queen's cry "Oh how melodramatic of you!" he rejoins: "I don't know what melodrama is, but...."

Other new arrivals worth checking on:


Marvel's graphic novel rendition of Stephen King's The Dark Tower is underway: the first issues have been anthologized in a hardcover volume, and I hope more are on the way. The volume portrays passages from The Gunslinger and Wizard and Glass, with Peter David giving a faithful and darkly poetic script and Jae Lee (whose Dracula chilled and thrilled) does dark and foreboding and very raw art: not to be missed. Moody and moody and mythic.


I borrowed the comic issues when they first came out from a good friend of our Dante's Heart art editor, who lent them to me on the strictest and most life-threatening injunction to do these precious, plastic-wrapped first editions no harm. Now I have the hardcover and can return the first editions, which I desperately hope that I have not bent or mauled in any way. The life-threatening injunction was extremely threatening - and I thought I was scary when I loan reading material....

Also, Gene Wolfe's Pirate Freedom, quick on the heels of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean success (hmm...another triumph for Disney), promises a grittier and deeply compelling take on pirates. In an interview with I forget whom, Wolfe claimed that he wrote The Wizard Knight in response to a young boy he met who was obsessed with knights and chivalry. Wolfe's quest to uncover the reason for the appeal of all things knightly led to the novel. (My personal thought is that Wolfe can never be trusted in his tales of how his books came to be, but everytime someone has the audacity to ask that hated question, "Where did you get the idea?" he tells a good tale in response.) Wolfe appears to have made a similar experiment here, digging into the mythos of the pirate captain. The epigraph that opens the book is H. L. Mencken's: "Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."

I wonder if there is any equitable yearning for readers of the other gender? To hoist the black flag, strap on something outrageous, and damn all conventions and expectations, just sail out and enjoy the breeze, live fully and sink anything in her path? As one who is new to pirates (though not to knights), and who never cracked the cover of Treasure Island as a boy though I devoured Pyle and Malory, I look forward to interviewing other readers of both genders on the subject and digging into what it is about pirates that excites our cultural imagination. Captain Jack Sparrow and our fellow with the octopus beard boarded and captured my imagination recently, and I suspect that Gene Wolfe will complete the conquest. I picked up my copy of Pirate Freedom this afternoon.


Speaking of interviews, check out this one, conducted by Neil Gaiman. It's brilliant - Gaiman and Wolfe take on the interview as an art form itself, and have a laugh in doing so. The opening salvo of the interview:

"Gene Wolfe: I'm anxious to get our interview under way, so I've decided to answer your first three questions before you ask them—You can work out the questions at leisure.

1. Although I considered placing The Knight in the universe of the Book of the New Sun series, I soon saw that there were too many dragons.

2. The Knight is to some degree autobiographical, as all my books are. For example, Able falls off a horse. I have done that myself. One is encouraged to remount as soon as possible, but not by the horse.

3. I do in fact own a sword. It is possible, as you say, that it is under some subtle, obscure spell. That might account for a few of the things that go on around here.

Are these satisfactory? I can elaborate on my replies if you wish, but they are certain to get worse.

So what did you think of Stardust?

(Spoilers included) (photo copyright Paramount Pictures)

Several of our editors saw Stardust tonight, and I doubt that we will all be in accord. For my own part, I began the movie skeptical - much of the charm of the book was lost, such as the beautiful transformations and witty enlivenings of old rhymes ("How many miles to Babylon?" or "The lion and the unicorn"). I began skeptical, but the movie won me over before long - with its wit, its swashbuckling flair, its wild balancing act between outrageous humor and poignancy. The half hour aboard ship that was added entirely out of nowhere - certainly not out of the book - is a perfect example: the poignancy of the star dancing on deck, shining gloriously with the heat of love in her heart, and the wild humor of Robert DeNiro as Captain Shakespeare, dancing in a frilly dress. DeNiro looked as though he was loving the part. There were so many wonderful scene-stealing moments, witty lines, and dashes of imagination. The lightning-ship spreading its net-wings is an image I will not soon forget. I can forgive the film for leaving out the dwarf, the rhymes, and for adding an extended battle in the witches' house and take the film for what it is: a different rendition of the fairy tale than the book was: extravagant, dashing, humorous, fun. Perhaps not as profound as the book - but the movie had me slapping my knee and laughing so hard and had my adrenaline rushing fast enough at other moments, that I didn't really mind. All that really irritated me was the voiceover at the start: that was a bit much. It takes a rare director to pull off a successful voiceover. This one didn't.

Some of my fellow editors at Dante's Heart will probably loathe the film (I already know what one in particular will say). I don't. I was too touched by the way the star began to glow and burn as she danced with her love on the deck of a ship sailing thousands of feet over the earth in a moonlit sky. It may be that I have given in, lowered my expectations of Hollywood, and traded (at least for this one evening) a priceless diamond for a gaudier gem, but ah! how that gem shines in the candlelight! The Stardust film has seduced me, and though the flaws of the film are glaring and pretty atrocious, and though I am sure some of the critics, at least, will slaughter the movie with their pens, I have to admit without embarrassment that I have not had this much fun at the cinema in a long time. This fairy tale, Stardust: go see it.

Like tears in rain

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

From the last death scene in Bladerunner. I just saw that again, first time in years.

Post a comment and share the quote that means the most to you, most recently, from a work of fantasy or fairytale. Let's make a collection together, a wunderkammern of curiosities and moments. We must keep passing such passages on, lest they be lost in time. Such poetry is our defense against the dark.