strange and random happenstance

The 13th Warrior
Based on the book Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton
Starring: Antonio Banderas, Diane Venora, Vladimir Kulich, Dennis Storhøi, Omar Sharif, Clive Russell, Richard Bremmer, Tony Curran, Eric Avari, Sven Wollter, Asbjorn Riis, and Maria Bonnevie
Release Date: August 27th, 1999
Rating: ★
To Buy

Ahmad ibn Fadlan is a successful court poet in Baghdad. But his poetic sensibilities lead him to love unwisely and he is banished far to the north to act as an ambassador to those tribes of Barbarians. The arrival of Vikings save Ahmad ibn Fadlan and his party great distress from Turkic Raiders. The Northmen are celebrating the death of their chieftain and the ascension of their new leader, Buliwyf. A young emissary arrives to ask Buliwyf if he will come to his father's kingdom and save them from an evil which cannot be named. The Viking's wisewoman comes to throw the bones and tells Buliwfy that the thirteenth warrior must not be a Norseman, and so Ahmad, called Ibn by his new travelling companions, unwillingly heads out to do battle with an evil he doesn't know with warriors who don't even speak his language. When they arrive at King Hrothgar's village the warriors see that the situation is more dire then they feared. The town is almost indefensible, and the mist is coming, and with that, the danger of the Wendol.

It makes sense that the oddest book in Crichton's oeuvre would make the oddest film. But still, I question this adaptation's purpose because whatever the book's failings there was at least a glimmer of something interesting, a little Viking culture, a little mystery in the mist, which has been entirely stripped away to be nothing more then over ninety minutes of battle. There is so little plot that I wouldn't even deign to call it a plot, something other critics and moviegoers apparently agreed with as the movie quickly flopped at the box office. The movie should have just been called "Buliwyf Does Battle." At least re-naming the story for release as The 13th Warrior versus Eaters of the Dead helped to highlight this lack of depth. The simple truth about this film is I struggled with it. This is a nothing film. Watching the movie I kept thinking to myself, how can I even write a review about a movie that is so lacking of anything that it is slipping out or my mind as unforgettable as I'm viewing it? This is just a bad movie, plain and simple, and this is after extensive re-shoots. The curious side of me wonders how bad the film was before the re-shoots. The fact that Crichton had to swoop in to try to save it makes me contemplative. If Crichton didn't step into the breech for the laugh riot that Congo became and the horror show The Lost World turned into, just exactly how horrible was this movie?

Even in this "polished" and "fixed" format it's a weird movie. Antonio Banderas is nothing so much as comic relief and nowhere approaching a romantic hero. Also, the film doesn't feel of it's time. Now I'm not talking about the tenth century when it's supposed to take place, I'm talking about the turn of the last century. This doesn't feel like a film from 1999, it feels like a film from the mid 80s. In fact it feels as if this film is the kindred spirit to Ladyhawke and Masters of the Universe with a little Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom thrown in for the Wendol. Because the Wendol sure as hell don't look like they belong in Scandinavia! India, maybe. If that India came out of the fevered dreams of Lucas and Spielberg. If only we could get this Jerry Goldsmith score, which is laughably bad and uneven, replaced with a score by Tangerine Dream, a la Legend, I think, aside from Antonio Banderas being on screen, no one watching it would think it was made later then 1987. Just look to that 80s hair band appearance of all the vikings, and I think my point has been made.

In a film of weird and awkward scenes strung together with no regard to plot or pace there is one scene that sticks out. I really can't tell if it was really cool or really lame. In the beginning of the film it's a big deal that Ibn can't speak the language and therefore needs not one by two translators. This not only makes the movie hard to get into, but with Omar Sharif re-telling the events happening in the film I felt as if I was watching this documentary I saw years ago on the IMAX about the Nile that he narrated. But these clunky opening scenes are nothing to the scene where Ibn "learns" the language of the Northmen. Over the course of what we presume is many weeks we just see Ibn staring at the mouths of the Vikings around the fire. The first time it is all gibberish, but slowly, through rain and snow, words are decipherable until finally he understands everything they say, being able to then speak to them and also scaring them with the rapidity of his learning. While I like that it had a realism with him slowly learning, like everything in this film, it was handled in such a cheesy and heavy-handed manner that I'm not sure if I liked it or if it was groan worthy. I tend to lean toward groan worthy, just because of the rest of the movie.

The depiction of the Wendol was also just odd. As previously mentioned, they obviously are inspired by the evil death cult in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, what with their sartorial choices as well as taking off their victims heads and gnawing on their bodies. This is also where the movie diverged most radically from the book. The book clearly proposed the theory that the Wendol where really Neanderthals. There is nothing Neanderthal here, as Ibn screams "they are just men!" All their danger lies in the trappings of their appearance, not in their mysticism. The bone shirts and the bear headdresses are the signifiers that these people are evil and mean business. I'm sorry, but no. Looking a little different and killing people isn't enough for what is supposed to be the epicness of Beowulf! Plus, the Vikings kill each other all the time for dominance, land, and fun, so how are the Wendol different? The only real atrocity these people have committed, as far as I've seen, is that they must singlehandedly be responsible for Scandinavia having a depleted bear population because each and every one of their thousands of warriors has a bear headdress. Crimes against nature, yes, crimes against man, debatable.  

But the worst part of this movie I think falls into the category of racial insensitivity. Ibn is from Baghdad, in Iraq; Antonio Banderas is from Málaga, in Spain. These countries aren't interchangeable. Just because Antonio isn't white doesn't mean he's middle eastern! Besides the atrocities of an obvious spray tan and so much guyliner that it's laughable, his accent is in no way correct. In fact, more then once I noticed that if Ibn said "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die" it would seem logical. Because he is THAT Spanish. His accent is so Spanish it's stereotypical Spanish. It is obvious that Antonio Banderas did nothing to help the box office of this film so why not just hire an Iraqi actor? But time and again this happens in Hollywood. Don't they get it that here's a chance to do something right and then they go and do something wrong, like Rooney Mara playing Tiger Lily! Seriously folks! The reason this pisses me off even more is that Michael Crichton knows better. He has DONE BETTER! Look to Rising Sun! Instead of hiring anyone who looked Asian for the Japanese roles, the movie used all Japanese actors! I know, it's a novel idea, but there it is.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 80s, Antonio Banderas, Beowulf, Congo, Eaters of the Dead, He-Man, Indiana Jones, Inigo Montoya, Legend, Michael Crichton, Racism, Rising Sun, Spain, The 13th Warrior, The Lost World, The Princess Bride, Viking

Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton
Published by: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: March, 1976
Format: Paperback, 181 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Ibn Fadlan has left Bagdad, City of Peace, as an ambassador to the King of Saqaliba who is interested in adapting the Muslim faith. Traveling up the Volga he and his party encounter many strange and unfamiliar people. Ibn meets a group of vikings who are encamped along the river awaiting the death of their chieftain. Ibn befriends the heir apparent, Buliwyf, which is awkward when another heir tries to assume the mantle of chieftain. Before the matter can be resolved a messenger arrives begging Buliwyf's help. The great King Rothgar is being besieged by monsters that come out of the mist and is in need of a great hero. Buliwyf is that hero. For this epic journey and the battle to come they need thirteen warriors to make up their company, and it is propitious that the thirteenth is a stranger, so they take Ibn with them, much against his will. While Ibn didn't count on this journey, he recounts the vulgar but heroic viking race he is stuck with for posterity. If they live he will have a story to tell about a brave race brought to their knees by mist; but first they must survive.

Of all Crichton's books Eaters of the Dead holds the unique distinction of the book I care least for. It creates neither love nor loathing in me. Eaters of the Dead is just there. A short book about vikings that I couldn't care less about. Yes, the cover of my edition does amuse me, because it has that distinction of being so very late eighties. Is the viking on a Tron esque battlefield? Is the viking trapped in a video game matrix? The skulls on sticks could almost double as palm trees. Other then that, I have rarely given this book a second thought. In fact when the book was being adapted into a movie, unlike every other Crichton adaptation, I didn't even bother to see it. In fact, as I write this, I haven't seen it to this day. Would I say this book was a misstep for Crichton? Not really. I think he needed to do it as an experiment to get it out of his system. He needed to show that he could write something different, even if I didn't care for that different. And this is very different, being first person, being all in the past, and apparently being the settlement of some argument he was having with one of his friends.

The apparent history of why Crichton felt a need to write Eaters of the Dead was that one of his friends labelled Beowulf as being boring. Crichton disagreed. To win this argument Crichton wrote a boring retelling of Beowulf. So I think his friend won the argument. I'm not saying Beowulf is boring, I'm saying that Crichton's attempts to prove that it is a riveting story resulted in a snore worthy book. One of the problems is Crichton is unable to move past his modern mindset. He has always been at the forefront of technology and research, with his books often predicting trends; and while writing about something that happened in the tenth century A.D. he couldn't help but anachronistically slip a few things in, mainly man's similarity to apes, otherwise called "research for Congo is seeping into this story." But the worst was a bizarre post narrative meditation on what exactly the "mist monsters" were. The "Grendel" or "Wendol" here isn't some mythic monster but some Neanderthals that have survived with concurrent evolution. Say what!?! REALLY!?! Um no. Beowulf is a myth and epic story that isn't mean to be explained by evolution. Crichton needed to think about what it looked like to people of the time NOT people of our time. This takes us out of the moment and changes how you look at the book, and not favorably.

Crichton has basically been spending the whole book in second guessing and invalidating his story with his "faux" history, hello Neanderthals. It is fairly obvious that Crichton was a fan of William Goldman and in particular his book The Princess Bride. After all, Ian Malcolm was only "mostly dead" and therefore able to be resurrected for his star turn in The Lost World. They probably even knew each other, being authors who had crossed over into film. When The Princess Bride came out three years prior to Eaters of the Dead I'm sure the interrupted style of the narrative with faux history and the "abridgment " of the "original text" was something fresh and new. In Eaters of the Dead Crichton tries something similar and fails miserably. It's almost as if Crichton missed the whole point of what Goldman was doing. The interruptions were to poke fun at the story, to add something more, and usually that something more was levity. With "faux" history you can never take yourself too seriously otherwise you end up sounding like a textbook. Look to authors who successfully use the footnotes, ie, Terry Pratchett, Susanna Clarke, and Lisa Lutz. They all add some fun with the facts. Crichton misses the boat and it feels like he's taking himself too seriously and with the Neanderthals previously mentioned he seems to almost have a need to make a myth real instead of an enjoyable read.     

The biggest misstep that Crichton made in structuring this book, aside from the "faux" historical framing device, was deciding that it should be a first person narrative. I believe it is the only book he wrote this way, though I have a slight inkling that maybe Disclosure might be first person, but I have no desire to dig up the book to find out. Yeah, I'm lazy at the moment, deal with it. The problem isn't so much in having it first person, but in having it first person with Ibn as the narrator. Ibn would be a prime example of an unreliable narrator and a complete ass. He's the king of the backhanded compliment and derides the vikings for their customs, which he then takes part in as he feels like it, all while saying how disgusting they are. Look how horrid and smelly they are and will fuck anything, oh, I can fuck the slaves too, yeah! Plus, I don't get why Crichton grafted on this true story to the Beowulf myth. I don't think it was to try to push the veracity he was so desperate to claim. The only reason I can think of is to have an outsider to relate to for us non-vikings. But there's no chance anyone is going to relate to Ibn the ass, so his purpose is therefore pointless. Unless Crichton really wanted us to hate the narrator...

Plus Ibn as narrator restricts the story so much. We don't get the grandeur and depth that is possible with this story by being forced into the confines of this bigoted ass's mind. Think how awesome vikings can be? Seriously, to make them boring Crichton should be awarded a special prize. Just look at what's popular on television right now! The History channel has a huge hit with a show just called Vikings! Also how about the whole How to Train Your Dragon book and movie series? This is a culture that we are fascinated with. Their achievements for the time where amazing and Crichton made them boring. Seriously boring. I mean, how did he do this? Maybe the people reading this when it came out in the mid-seventies saw something I didn't, but I seriously doubt it. If there's one Crichton book I would say to skip without compunction it would be Eaters of the Dead. Seriously, skip it. Move along now.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Beowulf, Congo, Eaters of the Dead, Ian Malcolm, Lisa Lutz, Michael Crichton, Neanderthal, Susanna Clarke, Terry Pratchett, The Lost World, The Princess Bride, The Thirteenth Warrior, Viking, William Goldman

Sphere
Based on the book by Michael Crichton
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson, Liev Schreiber, Peter Coyote, Queen Latifah, Marga Gómez, Huey Lewis, Bernard Hocke, James Pickens, Jr., Michael Keys Hall, and Ralph Tabakin
Release Date: February 13th, 1998
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Psychologist Norman Goodman has been called to a crash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He assumes it's just another normal plane crash where he is there to help the survivors. Instead it's an alien space craft that has crashed and the bogus report he doctored up for the Bush administration is being used as the protocol for contact with these unknown entities. The rest of the team is made up of friends he randomly picked, including an ex patient and lover, Beth, who might have some severe issues as well as a prescription drug dependence. No on in the team is excited to head to the bottom of the ocean, but curiosity wins out. Though they are quickly disappointed. The ship is American, from the future. The only thing of interest is a giant, obviously alien, sphere. Plans are soon made to return to the surface because they were only brought in if this was first contact. No one to contact, no point in keeping the bogus response team on call. Then one of the team, Harry, goes inside the sphere and everything changes. They are trapped on the ocean floor and they soon start to die in quick succession. But what or who is manifesting these attacks?

After the disappointment that was Congo followed by the abysmal Spielberg interpretation of The Lost World most of my hopes for a decent adaptation of Sphere went out the window. Yet I was still there at the theater opening day despite all my reservations about the bad stunt casting and my total conviction that Samuel L. Jackson wouldn't work for Harry, I really was routing for Andre Braugher to be cast, and as for Dustin Hoffman, well, more on that later. I was disappointed. I knew I would be, which might have clouded my judgement a bit I will admit, but it couldn't be helped. Re-watching the movie for the first time in seventeen years it wasn't as bad as I remembered, and it was a shock to me that it's been seventeen years. Sphere's adaptation is still highly flawed, but they tried, unlike Congo and The Lost World, and in there, somewhere, is the essence of the book, you just have to set your expectations aside.

The main problem with Sphere is that it is a psychological thriller about the human imagination that someone decided it needed to eschew the understated and spell things out in letters that you can read from outer space. Because everyone knows that us consumers haven't a brain cell to share between us so go big or go home. Why be subtle when you can be direct? The movie takes away the sophisticated and psychological and hits you over the head with a big stick. Instead of drawing out the suspense and slowly building it by letting us acclimatise to the habitat under the ocean and making us feel that it's a safe haven, as the book does before the terror sets in, we go straight to Queen Latifah being killed by jellyfish.

We have known Queen Latifah's character all of two seconds before she's killed so we have no investment here. The book has periods of calm and intense action, creating more suspense. Here we have constant action, people running around a screaming, now there's a fire, but not a small fire, it's now Backdraft underwater, and Peter Coyote is cut in half by a door! Ah yes, doors, such an easy way to die! Because when in doubt panic and shout! I wanted the multiple interpretations and ambiguity that made the book something you want to go back to again and again, whereas the movie is just one and done. The prime example is instead of keeping it a secret as to who went into the sphere and then drawing out the reveal as to who is doing the damage, just show Norman going in right away. Spell it out for us dummies. I don't think it's surprising that I haven't watched the film since I saw it in the theaters, I'm also not surprised it bombed. Because once you get to the end and there's a flying golden orb shooting out of the ocean into the depths of deep space, if you were in any doubt as to the obviousness of the storytelling, well, your doubt would be gone.

The lack of subtlety translates itself well with the highhanded score. Here more then anywhere else we are repeatedly hit over the head with this epic score worthy of a Jules Verne adaptation. I would love to see this movie recut with a different score because I think this, more then anything else, could help up the psychological terror. Think of how spooky it would be with just silence and little bursts of music. When I think of what the ocean floor must be like, silence with a slight sonar ping is what comes to mind. There's a reason that Jaws has so little music, it works! Here it feels as if the secondary habitat just might contain the Phantom of the Opera testing out his skills in the South Pacific. 

But what annoyed me most of all, aside from that horrid opening credits with the font going from sans serif to serif when it hits a spherical shape coupled with the movie's primary font, was the drastic shift in characters. All the characters across the board seemed to have a drastic downshift in intelligence, Norman is more a putz with any of his good lines being given to Harry, but never is that more clear then with Beth. Beth is complicated yet fiercely intelligent in the book, here she is debased by being sidelined by making her nothing more then part of Norman's backstory. Yes, by all means take this strong and interestingly complicated character and make her a bimbo with many issues, a prescription drug habit, and a chip on her shoulder from a very inappropriate affair with Norman. In fact it strains credulity that Dustin Hoffman could have ever in any known universe pulled Sharon Stone.

Speaking of Sharon Stone, I do wonder how much the character shift was based on casting. Samuel L. Jackson was a big star, this movie falling right between Pulp Fiction and Star Wars, so they beefed up his role. Sharon Stone, the femme fatale, well, obvious sex her up and drop down that IQ. What annoys me though, is aside from Dustin Hoffman, this was a perfectly cast movie. If the characters had stayed in line with the book this could have been the best adaptation of a Crichton novel yet! And I seriously take back any doubts I have about Samuel L. Jackson, because him and Sharon Stone made this movie work to a certain extent. It's Dustin Hoffman where everything falls apart. He just might be one of my most hated actors ever. I have liked him in all of two movies, Hook and Kung Fu Panda. That is it. He is an annoying putz that I just want to smack. He has no range and is almost always playing the same character. Hoffman is doing a disservice to the character of Norman, but the worst was having Norman say that he falsified his report to the government. Yes, I can see the Dustin Hoffman Norman doing this. The real, true Norman? No way!

Putting aside the bad casting what it all comes down to is that a movie needs to be a movie and a book needs to be a book. For some reason the movie, despite going off on wild tangents, kept trying to force the book's structure onto itself. With that horrid font setting up sections like "The Monster" it felt like the movie was too scared to try to find it's own identity and therefore clung to a gimmick that worked in the book because time was spread out and there were gaps between the manifested attacks in which tension built. By having the movie be in your face every second, well, sometimes those little sections would be mere minutes apart and just took away from the film. The only time the movie really just broke away from the book was in the hallucinatory ending in the sub that felt so forced I actually was feeling sad for the movie. Sphere just didn't know how to be it's own thing and it died a pathetic death. You can watch it for the potential, but it was wasted and might just leave you depressed. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Backdraft, Congo, Dustin Hoffman, Hook, JAWS, Kung Fu Panda, Michael Crichton, Pacific Ocean, Pulp Fiction, Samuel L. Jackson, Sharon Stone, Sphere, Star Wars, The Lost World, The Phantom of the Opera

Sphere by Michael Crichton
Published by: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: May 12th, 1987
Format: Paperback, 371 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Norman Johnson is a psychologist who is often asked to come to plane wrecks to help the survivors. But years earlier he worked on a secret project for the government wherein he was asked to think about the hypothetical event of the wreck being extraterrestrial in origin. He thought it was all a joke, but took the job because with a wife and a family who was he to turn away good money? It was no joke. He is now in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and before him are the candidates he had suggested would make the ideal welcoming party. There has been a crash. This crash though is unlike anything he could ever have expected. The "vessel" lies at the bottom of the ocean and has been there for hundreds of years.

Though nothing is as it seems. As the team settles into the habitat on the ocean floor they prepare for their first sojourn to the ship. At first glance the ship, while old, is obviously man made and comes from the future, but returned to Earth's past by mistake. While they wrap their heads around this conundrum they stumble on a sphere in the hold. This, unlike the ship, is obviously of alien origin. Back in the habitat things start to subtly change. An ocean devoid of life is now abundant in everything from shrimp to jellyfish. But there's something else out there too. A creature communicating with them via their computers. An entity called "Jerry" who is going to pay them a visit that they might not survive.

Sphere is really the book that started my Crichton obsession. Prior to Sphere I had just engaged in a dalliance with Crichton. I'd read Jurassic Park for high school biology and Rising Sun for fun on vacation one year in Door County. I believe it was on that vacation that I picked up Sphere at this bookstore in Sister Bay that was noted for having a Piggly Wiggly as part of the same complex. Ironically I mentioned to a few family members that bookstore was still there and they totally remembered it more for the convenience of the Piggly Wiggly then anything else. Yet I remember it as the bookstore that over the years became a goldmine for Crichton's books. During that trip I was too engrossed in Rising Sun to start the new book, but when I finally did pick up Sphere it became my go-to Crichton book for many years.

The most successful of Crichton's books all deal with a small group of individuals in a remote location fighting to survive. Yet in his other books the threat is very defined. Jurassic Park and The Lost World have dinosaurs, Congo has Apes, Prey has nanotechnology. Clear, definable villains. Whereas Sphere... technically it's our own subconscious fears, but it's also the manifestation of these fears. The threat is far more amorphous, and therefore far more scary. Sphere, for all intents and purposes, is basically a haunted house story at the bottom of the ocean. All the manifestations can't be easily explained and slowly, one by one, people start to die. There are only a few survivors and the ending is left open to interpretation. If by this point you're not thinking of Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House I'd say there's something wrong with you. That urgency and fear that you only get when being told a particularly great ghost story, here it is hiding in the guise of a popular thriller.

But the book doesn't just dwell on supernatural fears, Crichton is able to work in technological fears as well. He would, of course, in later novels take this idea further, but I think it's the simplicity of how "Jerry" is handled that makes it all the scarier. Jerry as the ersatz voice of the threatening entity using the computer interface makes me think of WarGames. The truth is, no matter how technology has advanced, when one thinks of the world being destroyed by computers it all goes back to the simplicity of WarGames. A computer that is childlike in it's interactions, unable to grasp the result of these interactions, that is what our fear is, childlike ignorance. Sometimes simplicity is the best way to get a concept across. Not to say that either Sphere or WarGames is simple, but the underlying concept is and that's what makes for something lasting.

Despite the lure of the supernatural and the fear of the technological, I can't quite put my finger on why Sphere was and is so resonant with me; but it sends chills up my spine and has resulted in many a sleepless night. I can't count how many times I've read the book, yet if you were to ask me to summarize the plot in detail I don't think I could do it. Sphere leaves more images and impressions then anything. The phosphorescence of mysterious sea life as it appears outside the habitat. The ominous clanging that can only mean one more person is dead. That feeling that you are isolated from the whole world and no one is coming to rescue you. Delicious.

Sphere is like a fever dream more then anything else. There's a detachment coupled with a frenzy to live, yet after it is all over you can't quite remember how it ended. Think back to books you retreated into as comfort reads when you were sick. The book swirls around you and you are being entertained and comforted, yet at the same time you're not quite sure what is going on. There's characters, there's a narrative, yet there's your detachment. Re-reading this book after so many years while actually being sick heightened this feeling. The book was exactly as I had remembered it, yet totally different. Of all Crichton's works this one is the loosest and most open to interpretation. What really did happen? Only the dreamer knows.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Aliens, Congo, Fever Dream, Jerry, Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton, Pacific Ocean, Prey, Rising Sun, Shirley Jackson, Sphere, The Haunting of Hill House, The Lost World, WarGames

Shocking as it may seem that an Anglophile and bibliophile became this way because of one of the most popular bestselling authors of thrillers and science fiction it is still true. Michael Crichton made me who I am. My formative years were all television shows and movies, with the occasional novelization of said television show or movie as my reading for the year. I'd sometimes daringly branch out to such books as Timothy Zahn's continuation of the Star Wars saga; but reading for fun was something I rarely did. Thanks to a biology teacher who knew some kids weren't cut out for science I found a love of one author and a love of reading that would change my life.

It was my sophomore year in high school and I was finally taking biology. The previous year I was able to convince my parents that if they made me take science my first year I'd be more likely to skip school... seeing as how much I already skipped it's surprising that this ploy worked. But I really lucked out in my biology teacher. I got to build a model of a plant cell, which my teacher liked so much that he asked to keep it. In later years in high school I would use my artistic talents in as many classes as I could to my benefit, even doing a painting for my history class of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, but this was the first time I realized that I could use my skill set outside of art classes. One of these optional assignments in biology was reading Jurassic Park.

Jurassic Park was the very first Michael Crichton book that I read and over the next few years I would devour everything he had ever written. Because I still had such a love of movies whenever a Crichton book was adapted for the screen this became a big deal. The mid nineties was the perfect time to be a Crichton fanatic in this regard. Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, Disclosure, Congo, The Lost World, Sphere, and The 13th Warrior were all made into films! I remember the sheer excitement of getting to go to an advance screening of The Lost World at Point Cinema with my friends. Yes, the movie was awful, but I can still remember that anticipation. That anticipatory excitement is once again running through me, I mean have you seen the trailer for Jurassic World yet? This got me to thinking of all the Crichton books that I haven't read in years and all the movies I only saw in the theaters and I thought, it's time to revisit my roots. And thus my Crichton Celebration was born. I hope you'll join me the next two months counting down to Jurassic World with a look back at Crichton's and my shared past.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Biology, Congo, Crichton Celebration, Disclosure, High School, Jurassic Park, Jurassic World, Michael Crichton, Movies, Rising Sun, Sphere, Star Wars, The 13th Warrior, The Lost World, Timothy Zhan

The Bride That Time Forgot (Brenda and Effie Book 5) by Paul Magrs
Book Provided by Headline Publishing
Published by: Headline Publishing
Publication Date: 2010
Format: Paperback, 352 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy
Even in Whitby Brenda's life might be going to the bad. Sure there have been dangers before, but they've always found a way to have a punch up and be victorious. The return of Effie's fancy man Alucard might be the turning point. Because Brenda may be in denial about what this once and possibly still evil vampire has done to her best friend. She doesn't want to go accusing Alucard of turning Effie unless she is certain, and she sure doesn't want to be certain. Yet, there is no way of denying that the vampire population in Whitby is on the rise... which brings Henry Cleavis back into Brenda's life. Brenda sure does have her trouble with men, either they're monsters, like her MIA husband, or monster hunters, like Henry.

If vampirism wasn't enough, there is a new bookshop in town, The Spooky Finger, run by an odd lady, Marjorie Staynes, who doesn't quite get that a book club should have a broad range of reading material, and instead focuses on the works of Mrs. Beatrice Mapp, an Edwardian writer, who placed the majority of her work in the fictional land of Qab, where men are subservient to women, which is the main draw for the book club. But the name Beatrice Mapp sparks something in Brenda's mind... what is her personal connection to Beatrice, and, on a side note, Marjorie's assistant and Robert's new plaything, Gila, looks suspicious like the subservient lizard race of Qab. Could Qab be real? Before long there are vampire attacks and portals to other places with tears in the very fabric of time, yet the strangest thing that happens is that Brenda willingly, if begrudgingly, takes the help of Mrs. Claus. Maybe that is the first sign that it's the end of days?

Qab. That land before time of garish colors where Jane Fonda from Barbarella wouldn't be incongruous. Qab was interesting, as was the Professor Challenger "Lost World" vibe. Yet, it felt wrong somehow. Spending so much time and energy on a place that's not the Whitby I know and love. This really pushed the series, not in a different way, but in a direction that, while logical, I wasn't that keen on embracing. My brother was always the "Land of the Lost" person in the family. He had the bad eighties posters of dinosaurs with mauve skies that would make your eyes water. I was never into this prehistoric or postapocalyptic man-eating Eden. Also, not to mention my nightmares of dinosaur dioramas from the Milwaukee County Museum, this volume just didn't grab me. We had just another creative medium that creates a vortex, like the previous installment and the film, Get They Inside Me, Satan. Personally, if I had to chose, a film would be a better vortex of evil than a book any day...

Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed the book and there where aspects that I loved. Effie finally going to the bad after all the hints and intimations, a book club that is really a cult. Because truly, if you think about it, I spent years trying to find a book club, and they're hard to break into, so, really, they are very much like a cult. I give Penny big props for getting on the inside, even if sometimes she started to believe the retoric. Mrs. Mapp and Bloomsbury! Adored this! I love that how Brenda describes Mrs. Mapp's writing, or more truthfully, her channeling of Qab. I knew something was up with her writing style, it was too much like Automatic Writing, where the writing is "produced from a subconscious, and/or external and/or spiritual source without conscious awareness of the content." I have always found Automatic Writing fascinating, and to have it in this book made me a little giddy, if truth be told. There where a few things that where left open ended, which I hope will be handled in the next book, mainly, the Limbosine and what happened to Leena.

Finally onto the nit picky. The switch back to first-person narrative was a bit jarring. It's not like this series hasn't utilized it, but since the third book we've been in third-person narration which made sense considering the expanding cast of characters and certain events that made Brenda unable to continue the narration herself. Here it seems to be occasionally forcing the narrative back on Brenda or Effie in her letters to Alucard, so that all news and events must filter through them and it's kind of awkward. Even more awkward is the fact that the book doesn't stay in first-person, but jumps back to third-person or vice versa, sometimes in the same chapter. The really really long chapters. I like third-person, it works for these books, even if we lose Brenda's voice, her voice is so strong now it can survive the change over from first-person.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Automatic Writing, Barbarella, Book Clubs, Brenda and Effie, Dracula, First-Person, Mrs. Mapp, Paul Magrs, Qab, The Bride that Time Forgot, The Lost World, Thrid-Person, Vampires, Whitby

Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton
Published by: Harper
Publication Date: November 24th, 2009
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"From one of the best-loved authors of all time comes an irresistible adventure of swashbuckling pirates in the New World, a classic story of treasure and betrayal.

The Caribbean, 1665. A remote colony of the English Crown, the island of Jamaica holds out against the vast supremacy of the Spanish empire. Port Royal, its capital, is a cutthroat town of taverns, grog shops, and bawdy houses.

In this steamy climate there's a living to be made, a living that can end swiftly by disease—or by dagger. For Captain Charles Hunter, gold in Spanish hands is gold for the taking, and the law of the land rests with those ruthless enough to make it.

Word in port is that the galleon El Trinidad, fresh from New Spain, is awaiting repairs in a nearby harbor. Heavily fortified, the impregnable harbor is guarded by the bloodthirsty Cazalla, a favorite commander of the Spanish king himself. With backing from a powerful ally, Hunter assembles a crew of ruffians to infiltrate the enemy outpost and commandeer El Trinidad, along with its fortune in Spanish gold. The raid is as perilous as the bloodiest tales of island legend, and Hunter will lose more than one man before he even sets foot on foreign shores, where dense jungle and the firepower of Spanish infantry stand between him and the treasure. . . .

Pirate Latitudes is Michael Crichton at his best: a rollicking adventure tale pulsing with relentless action, crackling atmosphere, and heart-pounding suspense."

So, despite being surrounded by friends who dislike him, I must proudly say, I love Michael Crichton! He is one of the reasons I became such a bibliomanic... instantly devouring his whole back catalog once I was able to find all the books (Electronic Life being the one that was elusive for so long, but an old computer manual does not a trilling book make). Anyway, this book was found on his computer after his sudden death from Cancer. No one knows when it was written, but I don't care really! It's a new Crichton novel when I thought I'd never get another. Even if it's not his best it will make me fondly recall all the wonderful hours spent reading his books. Sure I haven't really loved a book of his since Prey, but when this man was on, he was on! So, in anticipation of cracking open the spine of his latest novel I bring you my favorite of his books:

5) The Lost World - Any book that starts out with the line from The Princess Bride: "He was only mostly dead" is wonderfully amusing to me. Plus, Michael wrote this for Spielberg to make a sequel for the successful Jurassic Park, and then what does Spielberg do? Not use the book at all and make a total piece of crap. Dinosaurs on the mainland? Youngish overly athletic adopted daughters? Total BS! Plus the forced watching of this by Amtrak as the only other form of entertainment besides Leave it to Beaver, the edited version, makes my blood boil! Yes it's been over ten years... guess what? Still bitter! Also I'm now oddly concerned that my computer has a secret agenda... why is Spielberg in the spellcheck?

4) Sphere - Creepy under water dealings with possible aliens, will keep you up late into the night to see what is going on. The movie did not do it justice.

3) Congo - Wonderfully creepy African adventure, which again was destroyed by filmmakers. Once Jurassic Park was a hit, every Crichton book was pulled off the shelf and given a make over in film, and most were horrendous. This I think was the worst. They took a logical scenario, of an ape who can learn sign language and her interpreter and made the interpreter her nanny and had her have a speaking glove! "Amy sad, Amy, Amy, crap!" (Say it in a bad femalish/childlike computer voice).

2) Travels - This non fiction book is fascinating. The best part in my mind though is his description of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, it inspired me to maybe one day do the same. To see the curve of the Earth from solid ground, just awe inspiring.

1) The Great Train Robbery - His best movie AND book! Well, he did adapt the book himself, so no surprise there that it was therefore good. The book is just a fascinating portal into Victorian England and just an amazingly detailed plotting of a heist. Plus, awesome movie with Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland and Lesley-Anne Down. Makes all other movie heists pale in comparison!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 2:10 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Congo, Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton, Pirate Latitudes, Sphere, Spielberg, The Great Train Robbery, The Lost World, The Princess Bride, Travels, Tuesday Tomorrow