strange and random happenstance

So I'm an AMC Insider. Why you might ask as I don't watch many shows on AMC, well, the reason I first signed up wasn't for the lovely gift card drawing, that was a recent edition, I mainly signed up because they asked questions about BBC America programing and I wanted to clearly state that BBC America should be showing actual British shows not filling their schedule with The X-Files and whatever Star Trek they feel like at the moment. Star Trek is a "little" understandable because of Patrick Stewart, but The X-Files!?! In between stating all my outrage and answering questions about my favorite Dirk Gently characters I started to get all these surveys about the upcoming show Killing Eve. The initial promos had me entirely uninterested, because they were vague and I had no idea what the show was about. After probably the tenth promo I watched I realized it was an espionage driven game of cat and mouse starring Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer and I decided to give it a try. Plus, Jodie Comer was really great in The White Princess so for me she was the real draw and the fact that only Oh got an Emmy nomination is shocking because I discovered in that first episode what many people came to realize as they joined the bandwagon late, Killing Eve is an exquisite dark comedy about two women on opposites sides inextricably drawn to each other where Comer is amazing in her instability. I was so desperate for more that I picked up Luke Jennings's compilation of Villanelle novellas, Codename Villanelle, to get more of a fix. But this adaptation is one of those rare occasions where it's better than the source material. Instead of a female James Bond with a hyperactive sex drive where everything is laid bare from the beginning, we're given a twisty tale that will keep you guessing until the very end and thanking whatever deity you believe in that it was renewed for a second series.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, And the Emmy Goes To, BBC America, Codename Villanelle, James Bond, Jodie Comer, Killing Eve, Luke Jennings, Patrick Stewart, Sandra Oh, Spies, Star Trek, THe White Princess, The X-Files, Villanelle

The Supernatural Enhancements by Edgar Cantero
Published by: Doubleday
Publication Date: August 12th, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 368 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Ambrose Wells killed himself. In the same fashion and at the same age his father had thirty years earlier. At twenty-three A. knew nothing of his distant American cousin. Or that Ambrose was rich. Therefore it all came as rather a shock to him to discover that he is the heir of a wealthy estate in Virginia. Axton House and all it's contents, including a butler, are his. A. takes his friend Niamh as his companion on this adventure. A waifish fifteen year old punk with a proclivity to silence. Upon arriving at the rambling house they are struck by the enormity of what lies ahead and by the deep-seated knowledge that the house is haunted. But they aren't people to run away at the first signs of something spooky, such as the butler mysteriously being AWOL. Instead they think logically. They install video cameras, audio recording devices, they keep diaries, dream journals, they keep their Aunt Liza constantly informed of all their activities, because Axton House isn't going to claim them like it did Ambrose and his father before him. Therefore they look into Ambrose's life, his hidden rooms, his mysterious maze, his secret cyphers, his codenamed friends, and try to find the connecting thread. What was Ambrose hiding? Obviously something valuable or important enough for someone to attempt to break into Axton House. Could it have to do with the rumors of a secret meeting that happens every year on the night of the winter solstice? The solstice is fast approaching. They have forty-eight days to uncover the secrets buried with the dead. Will it be enough?

The way The Supernatural Enhancements is written as a collection of diary entries, straight up back and forth dialogue from audio recordings, receipts, scrawled notes from Niamh, letters to Aunt Liza, at 368 pages it's a surprisingly fast read. It's like popcorn, you just keep reaching for that next handful. I devoured this book in three sittings and at each subsequent sitting I felt the quality ebbing away. That immediacy, that need to finish was going out like a riptide and it wasn't coming back. Despite what you might think every time I pick up a book I want it to be a new favorite, a book that I will recommend to all and sundry. Books are almost more exciting before you read them because from that moment you pick them up at the bookstore and take it home and put it on your shelf it's nothing but potential. You don't know how good or bad it's going to be, and that's electrifying. But once the reading commences? The critic in me can't help but keep a running tally of how I think the book is going. Before I forced myself to put aside The Supernatural Enhancements that first night because I was barely able to keep my eyes open it was solidly four stars, perhaps more. The next day, new elements were introduced, the narrative started to wobble, but it could pull three stars still. On my final day, I just didn't care what happened on the eve of the solstice. Turning a lovely Gothic haunted house story into what this book became? Sorry two stars.

All that self-aware humor. All that meta goodness, the video cameras, The X-Files, all of it came to naught. Because I can't shake the feeling that all the different narrative techniques were used just to use them, because in the end all of these devices and nothing untoward was caught on camera? There was no "proof" of anything so what was the point of their stay in Axton House? Yes, there's the outcome, but that was all too hasty, too messy, that didn't fit with the methodical that came before. The book just didn't know what it wanted to be. Was it the story of a haunted house or family secrets or secret societies? What!?! It was too all over the place and at some point I felt the book shifted from self-aware to smug, and that didn't sit well with me. The references, the jokes became too personal too much for the author's amusement, as did the luxuriating in the narrative techniques. Just because you think something is the funniest thing ever doesn't mean that it is. Naming the secret society members after Scooby-Doo villains? Seriously? And the reader will only know this if they bother to decode the cipher at the beginning of the book which also admits to "[stealing] from many others. I apologize if I was not explicit enough." And that right there is the book's downfall. Too much of the other, not enough of the original. The second A. and Niamh entered Axton House I was strongly aware that I recognized the house, it's because it's the antebellum mansion from Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte. When a Sinéad O'Connor song starts playing, I was actually astonished that Cantero didn't think that everyone would make The Wonderful Wizard of Oz connection. But he was too busy "stealing" to realize that each reference took the reader out of the book and took something away from his narrative.

But then again, this is a man who thinks it's perfectly fine to have a twenty-three year old man sharing a bed with a fifteen year old girl. Because fifteen is a girl. Not a woman. Not someone who is old enough to make her own choices. I know nothing actually happens between them in that bed and A. is basically an asexual cipher himself, but just what the fuck Cantero!?! Though minus the literal fuck. This is not cool. Just because the girl is constantly seeking something more physical to happen between them making her the aggressor doesn't make it acceptable. Though looking online, because I do try to always backup my rabid attacks, Cantero is from Spain and until the law changed in 2015, otherwise known as a year AFTER this book was published, the age of consent was thirteen. Thirteen!?! Seriously!?! My head hurts just thinking of myself at thirteen and if I was capable of making these big decisions, and I really don't think I was. Yes, I do know many of my classmates were sexually active around then, but with a twenty-three year old? No. Hell no. It was with their peers. And while Niamh gives off a very powerful all-knowing "girl with the dragon tattoo" vibe, that never once takes away from how young she is. In the #MeToo era with these seismic shifts everything from film to literature is going to come under even more scrutiny. Yes, this book is four years old, but I'd like to think that people are good and have moral compasses and that they would go, hang on, this relationship is just weird. Yes, it might have been to unsettle the reader, but for me it was a major problem that I couldn't get past.

The stealing, the Lolita of it all, all these disparate elements brought together, led to the book just ending in a shambles. It's like each and every decision Cantero made took away so much that by the end when the secret society is having their meeting and they all die, oh sorry, spoiler alert, I didn't care. PS you won't either. Who are these multitudes of Ambrose's friends and who are their killers? Nothing is made clear and everything is just a jumble. Our leads go to the house, meet some people, have a party and leave? That is the barest summary of the book and for me there wasn't enough atmosphere and too much thrown at me in the end. There's only so much of hurry up and wait I can take and I was desperately waiting for this book to become just the slightest bit Gothic. Yes, I know I picked it up in the horror section, but a haunted house, by it's very inclusion, indicates that something Gothic is going to go down, and instead this was just a mishmash of things it could have been and things that were better before they were incorporated into another persons work. Is being original that hard? From a recent argument I was involved in online, apparently yes. People don't want to be original they just want to take the best of the work of someone else and claim it's an homage or parody. I do not think those mean what they think those mean. But I think the final straw deals with Aunt Liza. Liza is an abbreviation of Elizabeth, so I have MANY opinions on this topic. Here are things you can and can not do. Elizabeth can create Eliza, Liza, Beth, Liz, Lizzy, but NEVER Betty. It's like that whole John/Jack thing. NOPE. And spare me from people who think that Elizabeth spelled Elisabeth can be abbreviated into Liz or Lizzy. There is no fucking "Z" Elisabeth Moss! Yeah, so maybe I internalized everyone calling her Lizzy at the awards shows the past few months a little too much. But it's been a burden my entire life and it was the final straw for this book.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: #MeToo, Consent, Edgar Cantero, Elizabeth, Going Gothic, Gothic, Hush... Hush, Inheritance, Lolita, Meta, Scooby Doo, Sinead O'Connor, Sweet Charlotte, The Supernatural Enhancements, The Wizard of Oz, The X-Files

The Man in the High Castle Season 1
Based on the book by Philip K. Dick
Starring: Alexa Davalos, Conor Leslie, Macall Gordon, Daniel Roebuck, Rupert Evans, DJ Qualls, Michael Gaston, Christine Chatelain, Callum Seagram Airlie, Carmen Mikkelsen, Darren Dolynski, Brennan Brown, Joel de la Fuente, Lee Shorten, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Arnold Chun, Carsten Norgaard, Hiro Kanagawa, Mayumi Yoshida, Daisuke Tsuji, Amy Okuda, Luke Kleintank, Rufus Sewell, Chelah Horsdal, Quinn Lord, Gracyn Shinyei, Genea Charpentier, Ray Proscia, Wolf Muser, Rick Worthy, and Camille Sullivan
Release Date: November 20th, 2015
Rating: ★★★★★
To Watch

Juliana Crain's sister has gotten herself into trouble and it will change the whole course of Juliana's life. She sees Trudy shot by the Kenpeitai in the street. Reeling from this shock she stumbles home and notices that she's holding a film reel that Trudy handed her. She can't believe what the film shows. A world where the Allied forces won WWII. A world where San Francisco isn't occupied by the Japanese and the Reich doesn't control the East Coast. When her boyfriend Frank comes home he urges Juliana to go to the police. Tell the Kenpeitai everything to clear her name of treason. Instead Juliana decides to deliver the film to the neutral zone in Trudy's place. She leaves for Canon City Colorado and doesn't look back. In her absence Frank is implicated in Trudy's crimes. The fact that his grandfather was Jewish means that he and his family have no standing. Before the misunderstanding is cleared up Frank will lose those closest to him all while covering for the woman he loves, a woman who is currently at sea. She has no idea who her contact is or who she is supposed to give the film to. There's a young man from New York, Joe, who she's not sure if she can trust. Yet his help saves her life and she learns that he too is part of the resistance. He too knows of the films and that they are to be delivered to "The Man in the High Castle."

Only Joe isn't really a member of the resistance. He has infiltrated the resistance on the orders of his leader, Obergruppenführer John Smith. Joe is a Nazis. Only his mission in Canon City didn't go to plan because of the arrival of Juliana Crain. Therefore he needs to prove his loyalty to the Reich. Seeing as Juliana Crain went home to San Francisco, it makes sense that Joe will follow her there, uncover all her contacts and discover the new film that has appeared. Only Julia has changed drastically since her experiences. She doesn't want to make all the deaths of those she loved be in vain and she has taken a job as a hostess for the Trade Minister of the Pacific States, Nobusuke Tagomi. Little does she know that this man whom the resistance views as the enemy might have very similar goals to her. He's been working with a high ranking Nazi to undermine the Reich to give Japan parity to Germany. Because another World War is looming. One where there can be only one victor. The films showing a different world might just hold the key to the truth of what is really going on, but will it all be in vain? Is war inevitable?

The difference between a good adaptation and a bad adaptation is that at the end you can't believe it was ten hours long. As you gobbled the episodes up they just flew by. Whereas a bad adaptation, it feels like work to watch each excruciating episode and ten hours can feel like a lifetime. Yes, I'm looking at you The Handmaid's Tale! The Man in the High Castle was the exact opposite in almost every way to that atrocious Atwood adaptation. Constantly compelling, faithful when needed, expansive when called on, always building on the writing of Philip K. Dick while making sure to create a show that was bingeworthy. But that's what happens when your show is created by someone who had astronomical success with The X-Files, AKA Frank Spotnitz, versus someone who's more known for kitschy Canadian shows, though I will say here to Bruce Miller, LOVE Men in Trees! Also The X-Files had a sustained look and feel, and that really can't be said for any of Bruce Miller's many shows. The noir feel that imbues ever scene of The Man in the High Castle is just perfect. While there is spycraft I'd liken it more to the Cold War than WWII which makes sense being set in 1962. But it's just such a fully visualized representation of this alternate world that it's staggering how complete it is from the advertising to the clothing. I just want more and more and more of it!

What I found interesting in translating this book to the screen is that the Japanese are depicted far more bleakly perhaps even verging on evil. The book is so concerned with the Nazi threat, as was Philip K. Dick himself, that comparatively the Japanese are depicted benignly. His personal bias came through in his writing. Therefore I don't know if this was some way to level the playing field and show that both surviving Axis powers were equally evil or to just create more strife in the lives of our protagonists who predominately live under Japanese rule. Because a clearer statement of the evil of the Japanese couldn't be made than having the Kenpeitai accidentally kill Frank's sister and her two children. Nothing that horrific happens in the book, that's for sure. But it serves a purpose in that it makes Frank invested in the resistance. Juliana's sister's death and Frank's sister's death unite them in their desire to overthrow the world they have come to accept. But what's more by showing the Japanese as evil and then going further into their characters, learning more about Tagomi, seeing how the head of the Kenpeitai bristles under what he has to do, all this gives us a deeper, layered, nuanced show, where the villains aren't necessarily so because of their acts but because they have been forced into these roles over time.

Though what this adaptation did superbly was expand Philip K. Dick's world so that we weren't just seeing the American and Japanese side of things but it also ensconsced us firmly within the Reich and in particular the Reich in America. Yes, this is literally going to be all about the importance of Rufus Sewell. I should say Rufus Sewell as Obergruppenführer John Smith, but seriously, wherever Rufus goes I follow. Season two of Victoria just wasn't the same without him in every single episode. Oh Lord M, you're breaking my heart. THIS is the genius of casting Rufus! Most people have some sort of connection to him as an actor, I mean he's seriously amazing. By casting him as a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi you know he's the bad guy and you aren't rooting for him, because seriously, you NEVER root for Nazis, instead you are drawn into the mindset of the Reich. You get a glimpse into how calculating and cruel their world is where old friends can become enemies that you are to interrogate over a family dinner and your own child's life hangs in the balance because of a hereditary illness. You see the Nazis in all their evil and you understand that evil. To understand your enemy is the first step in destroying them.

One major change that makes total sense in the shift of mediums is that instead of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy being a book within the book it's a series of films that look like newsreels that where shown in cinemas during and right after WWII. In the book it made sense for this alternate outcome of WWII to be disseminated as a book, but for a TV show it makes sense for it to be a film. Like to like in the different media. Because think how boring it would be watching people read long sections out of the book on screen? It's been proven that people have only about a 15-20 minute attention span when being read to, so firstly, everyone would have tuned out, and secondly? Snoozeville. Whereas think how much information can be gleaned in a short film and watching the characters reactions to that film? What's more it's far more visceral for the viewers to see images, many of which the are familiar with. The films, for the most part, show the world that we are familiar with. What's more in the book The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is being read by everyone everywhere in the Japanese territories, whereas having films that have to be secreted around the country, films that even Hitler wants to watch? This just adds to the noir spycraft of the series.

Yet one thing that hasn't been explained yet, though it might in season two, is where the films come from and why The Man in the High Castle wants them. Obviously they are interesting, even Hitler is obsessed with them, but there's a bigger secret here. In the book The Man in the High Castle is the one disseminating the information, yet in this adaptation he's collecting it. Why!?! One theory I have is that perhaps he's collecting the films to eventually write the book in order to achieve the outcome in the book, which is informing the masses through the publication of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. But then where are the films coming from? Are they slipping through rips in time and space like Tagomi in that cliffhanger seeing him in OUR 1962 San Francisco? Are they actually showing the truth and that everyone is under some kind of mass hypnosis? I have other theories but I don't want to start spoiling everything. Whatever the reason for this reversal it has kept me guessing and to take a book that I've read and loved and make it new and fresh? Well that's truly amazing in my mind. I literally can not wait to start season two (right now!) but I'm also worried that once I binge it what will happen to me while I wait for season three? Seriously, what will happen!?! 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Alternate History, Dystopian, Dystopian Drama, Japan, Nazis, Philip K. Dick, Rufus Sewell, San Francisco, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, The Handmaid's Tale, The Man in the High Castle, The X-Files, WWII

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
Published by: Alfred A. Knopf
Publication Date: 1995
Format: Hardcover, 399 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Lyra Belacqua has had the run of Jordan College in Oxford her whole young life. The poor scholars just don't know what do to with the unruly girl. With her daemon Pantalaimon by her side and her best friend Roger she has scaled the roofs, waged war on the Gyptians, and spent her life going where she pleased. Though she'd never made into the Retiring Room... the night she does is a momentous one. It's not just the success of a campaign she's long wagged, but her uncle Lord Asriel has arrived unexpectedly and within a short amount of time she saves his life and learns about something that is to become her obsession, Dust. She can feel the capital "D." But Lord Asriel leaves, alive, and life goes back to normal, that is until kids start disappearing all over England. The kidnappers are given the moniker of Gobblers and soon they aren't just in Oxford, but they've taken Roger! Lyra is determined to save him yet she is sidetracked by the lovely Mrs. Coulter. She arrives and whisks Lyra off her feet and to London, where she is to serve as her assistant. The coincidence of Mrs. Coulter's arrival and that of the Gobblers isn't noticed by Lyra until later. When she realizes that this mysterious woman is responsible and is bankrolled by the church she runs away to find Roger. Teaming up with the Gyptians they travel north. There Lyra will see the most amazing sights and also face the most horrific betrayal. But with Pantalaimon, an armoured bear, witches, an aeronaut, and the mysterious alethiometer, Lyra might just succeed and find out what this Dust is.

I first stumbled on His Dark Materials during a very turbulent time in my life. There was loss and chaos and somehow these books reflected that and made me realize things were going to be OK. I would even go so far as to say that they really helped inform my DNA and pushed me to read more, to escape into the magical worlds located innocuously between two covers but also to look outside myself, to forge new friendships and rebuild what had become of my life. These books even helped form one of my most lasting friendships. You know how finding someone who likes the same book as you is like a recommendation for that person? Well I recommended this series to my friend Jess early in our friendship and her embracing of them was like a gold star next to my name saying that I would make a good friend, which I hope I still am! But having our friendship founded on books, and I will add Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has lead to me finding more and more friends through the love of literature. I guess, as I write this, I never really grasped how much this one book changed me. The Golden Compass isn't my favorite book, but it is a formative book and all these years later I still enjoyed sinking back into Lyra's world.

Though this time I saw Lyra's world very differently. It's not that the book has changed in the least since I first picked it up or even since I re-read it before the movie came out, it's that I have changed and my world view has expanded. This of course not only makes sense but also is part and parcel of the book. The Golden Compass is all about growing up and becoming a part of the adult world. Learning about all the things, all the innuendo that slipped past you for years. Losing your innocence. It's like having the blinders taken off and what struck me forcibly this time was how much The Golden Compass is like an adult version of The Wizard of Oz. Now I'm not talking Wicked territory, though having read those books probably helped me to see this book more clearly. I mean all the elements are here, though slightly distorted. There's Lyra's daemon standing in for Toto, there's the Wicked Witch, Mrs. Coulter, there's bears and balloons and misunderstandings and and and... I just found it so interesting how the themes and the imagery from L. Frank Baum's book seemed to have so much influence here. Yet while it mirrors it it's not a carbon copy. While The Wizard of Oz is a classic, it's a flawed classic that's too saccharine and too condescending. Here we are given a new classic, it has all the elements there but is better. More adult, more adventure, and more, dare I insult a Tin Man and say heart?

The heart of this series is not our heroine Lyra, but the relationship between Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon. I had a daemon once. He was black and white and furry and was quite literally my soul. When I first read The Golden Compass I had just lost his brother and at the age of fourteen Spot became an indoor cat. Over the next eight years we became even more inseparable so when the inevitable separation came I was gutted. It has been almost nine years of feeling like I'm not all there. Feeling as if a part of me is gone. On my previous two readings Spot was alive and well and with me and our parting was a thing never to be contemplated. Yes, it would happen, but one didn't dare actually think about it. This time though he is no longer with me and therefore all the emotions that Lyra feels at the possible severing, of the intercision between her and Pantalaimon devised by Mrs. Coulter to stop Dust settling wasn't hypothetical to me, it was a reality. My soul has been split and I can well see why those who actually survive this horror become ghosts or zombies. The pain is almost unbearable. Yet to never have had the connection would be worse. Philip Pullman captures the connection between humans and animals so exquisitely that while I was hurting all over again the fact that someone else out there gets it. That someone else out there knows the power of that connection, a power to literally unlock worlds, is something of a comfort.

Yet there were also discomforting thoughts that this book brings up, questions about the Church. The school my mom was a librarian at actually banned these books when the movie came out because of Philip Pullman's beliefs. Though I think reading the books and having a discussion over the content would be far more productive than slamming a book because its author is an atheist. But the parent to lodge the initial complaint kind of has a point in that the church is depicted very badly. No that doesn't mean I'm in favor of banning any books, it just means that I am open enough to see that they have a point. The church, through the process of intercision, wants to maintain the innocence of children by not allowing dust to settle on them. And yes, they are willing to do this at the expense of their young lives. This brings about a lot of questions. Mainly, if their daemon is their soul and it is cut from them how exactly do they enter heaven? The soul is what is most important, not what happens here on earth and yet they are forfeiting their souls through this procedure. I just don't get the church's backward thinking. Of course I believe all this is addressed in the proceeding volumes, I haven't read them in awhile and this is something my mind kept coming back to while reading The Golden Compass. What's more just look to the church in our world, with all the molestation and sexual assaults. These scandals clearly show that the church itself is one of the greatest risks to children's innocence and yet in Lyra's world they are all about protecting it? Yes, these are heavy thoughts that perhaps need more time to be addressed than in this review...

Let's move onto other topics, how about worldbuilding? Philip Pullman has built this amazing and parallel world to ours with steampunk elements and animal familiars and then he ever so slightly slips up. There's the scholarly world of Oxford, the glamorous world of Mrs. Coulter, which I picture very 1920s, the rough and tumble like of the Gyptians, all fitting together into this very British world view and then there's the Bolvager facility. A facility that just doesn't fit into this written world. I'm not talking about what they do at the facility, that is very much of this imagined world, I'm talking about the building itself with it's tunnels under the snow and the ceiling tiles that can admit a girl who is rather small for her age into it's secrets. It's just too Michael Crichton. I felt like I was reading the description of the facility built at the bottom of the ocean in Sphere. Or like I was about to watch the episode of The X-Files "Ice" which was clearly an ode to Michael Crichton with it's alien parasite living in the frozen tundra. Yes, the book regains it's momentum after this bump in the road, but it's still a bump that could have been fixed! This one little section takes you out of the story and makes you feel like you're visiting your own doctor's office. Yes, facilities like this the world over are very similar, but did this facility a world away have to be? Couldn't it have had some of the vast imagination that fueled the rest of this book? Pretty please? Make the connection to itself NOT to us.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Different Kind of P and P, Church, Daemons, Dust, L. Frank Baum, Lyra Belacqua, Michael Crichton, Mrs. Coulter, Oxford, Philip Pullman, Sphere, The Golden Compass, The Wizard of Oz, The X-Files, Worldbuilding