Monthly Archives: August 2013

Elysium Micro-Review, Plus Doug’s Movie Ratings Scheme

25 Sunday Aug 2013

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Matt Damon in his “Elysium” bald-headed glory

I don’t do real movie reviews.  For one, I don’t think I’m very good at them, and for another, I’m not getting paid for it.  Instead what I do is tell you what kind of movies I like and, in that context, how I would rate a particular movie.

I am ecumenical in my film enjoyment; I like everything from cartoons to musicals to drama (even Shakespearean drama) to sci-fi to comic book movies to anime.  What do I like?  I thought “The Incredibles” was one of the best movies of the last 15 years.  I think the three “Lord of the Rings” movies are incredible, and hold up really well.  I think everyone should be required to see “Casablanca” and “Singin’ in the Rain”, two of the best movies of all time.  I saw “Citizen Kane” once; I don’t ever need to see it again.  I think “The Godfather” is amazing, but don’t particularly enjoy “The Godfather II”.  I laugh so hard at some scenes in “Sleeper” that I practically wet myself.  So there you have it.

Rankings-wise, I don’t use stars, or anything like that.  My rankings are simple:

  • Go see this in the theater, and buy it when it comes out!
  • Go see this in the theater, but you don’t need the DVD (e.g., “Dangerous Liaisons”, which I’m glad I saw, and never ever want to see again as long as I live.  If need to see a young Uma Thurman’s boobs again, I’ll watch “Baron Munchausen”)
  • Buy the movie when it comes out, but it doesn’t require a theater trip (e.g., you don’t really need to see “The 40 Year Old Virgin” on the big screen)
  • Just rent the damn movie when it comes out
  • Why did I rent this horrible movie?

This is an enjoyment scale, not a quality scale.  For example, “Mad Max” is not a particularly high-quality, Academy Award-winning film, but man do you need to see that sucker on the big screen, you know what I’m saying?  By the opposite token, “Dangerous Liaisons” is a beautifully written, wonderfully acted, well-directed movie that is worth seeing . . . once.  Afterwards, take a shower and rinse out your mouth, and never see it again.  (“The French Lieutenant’s Woman” is similar.  Good movie, but uck!)

That all being a prelude to how I like “Elysium”, the latest film by South African film wunderkind Neill Blomkamp.  And the answer is:  Meh.  Which means, “Just rent the damn movie when it comes out.”

The premise is interesting enough; in the mid 22nd Century, the wealth gap has reached such an epic level that the Rich Folks have left the planet entirely, living on their very own space habitat, Elysium; sort of the ultimate in gated communities.  On Elysium, you can get any sickness cured.  On overpopulated Terra, not so much.  Like many dystopian future science fiction movies, the poor ol’ Earth is a hellhole.  And naturally, most folks want to get on up to Elysium.

There’s a bunch of interesting ideas in this movie–apartheid taken to its logical extreme, ditto the aforementioned wealth gap, ditto stomping on illegal immigrants (the film even calls them “illegals”, just like Romney did during the 2012 election).  But for me it just didn’t hang together.

Don’t blame Matt Damon or Jodie Foster, who both put in excellent performances.  (I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of Damon’s crooked smile that just seems to bust out of him when you least expect it.)  No, it feels more like too many ideas in the stew.  Plus I am sick Sick SICK of shaky-cam, where everything is close up and shaky to simulate urgency, or realism, or some damn thing.  It is the hellspawn of “The Blair Witch Project”, and it seems as if no SF or action movie director is allowed to use steady camera shots.  Enough, already!  And “Elysium” uses it all the damn time.

And while I really appreciate the melange of cultures and accents in the film–middle-American Matt Damon, South Africans, Hispanics, a couple of African Americans, that evil dude from the first “Iron Man” movie (no, not Jeff Bridges; the bad guy from the caves)–between the close-ups, the shaky-cam, and the accents, half the time I couldn’t understand the damn dialog.  Especially when the character Spider was speaking, in his thick L.A. Barrio accent (one presumes).  It’s hard for me to enjoy a movie when I both can’t see and can’t understand the dialog of WTF is going on.

Finally, there’s the “science”.  Which I’m putting in quotes because who the heck would build a space habitat where one side is open to space?  Yes, it’s theoretically possible to spin a giant habitat enough to hold the air in, but it has to be really big, and spinning really fast.  It’s dramatic-looking; it’s also stupid.

And all the other tech in the movie is basically stuff we have right now.  The computers not only looked like current tech, they actually looked like my friend Chris’ 8 year-old Alienware laptop.  In 2154?  Seriously?  And (spoiler warning!) the plot hinges on the ability of someone to just insert any random person as President of this giant, high tech satellite during a hard system reboot and then you’re in charge?  SERIOUSLY?  Even “Live Free or Die Hard” was more realistic about computer security than that.  C’mon, Blomkamp!  I mean, I go to an SF or comic book movie expecting to test my willing suspension of disbelief, but there’s testing it, and there’s spitting in its face.

So to sum up:  “Elysium”, meh.  Rent it when it’s out on DVD or streaming download.

I’m So Sick of the SF Ghetto

24 Saturday Aug 2013

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elon musk
Elon Musk–who I bet read tons of SF growing up

Okay, yeah, it’s a button for me, but as long-time reader of genre fiction–science fiction, fantasy, and some mystery–I do get awfully tired when I see a Writer of LitRuhChure™ (ordained so by The Literary Powers That Be) dabble his or her toes in genre and get praised to the skies for it.

The proximate cause of today’s rant is a fawning article about Margaret Atwood in The Guardian.  Atwood, who has been publishing poetry and “literary” fiction novels since the early 60s, is no stranger to genre fiction; her first foray into science fiction was “The Handmaid’s Tale” back in 1985.  But she made her bones as a writer of LitRuhChure, and the reporter in The Guardian is clearly treating her as a Real Writer who dabbles in SF, rather than a genre writer.  (Atwood, as is typical for Literary Fiction writers who do genre, tries to disavow any connection to SF.)

And frankly, I have no problem with that.  Nor do I have any problem with Atwood’s work, or with her deciding to move into SF.  Heck, the more the merrier!

No, what I have a problem with is Atwood being treated as some kind of prescient genius for her latest set of SF works (that feature a lot of biotech), rather than what she is:  Another in a long line of writers who have tackled this subject in the SF genre.  But because she’s MARGARET ATWOOD, Literary Writer, suddenly the stuff she’s writing about–genetically-modified food, vat-grown meat, and the like–is amazing and forward-looking.

Look, LitCrits:  We’ve been talking about this stuff in SF for a long, long, LONG time.  Take the three things that Emma Brockes, the author of the article, seems to find so amazing:  “cross-species gene-splicing; growing meat in a petri dish; man-made pandemics”.  This post would go on forever if I started to list all the SF authors who have touched on all three of those topics, and have been doing so for, literally, decades, but just a couple of quick mentions:  Frank Herbert wrote an entire novel based on a man-made pandemic called “The White Plague”, released in 1982.  Heinlein’s “The Star Beast” mentions in passing meat-like foods grown from yeast in 1954.  And one of the earliest SF writers, Olaf Stapleton, wrote about something that sounds just like cross-species gene-splicing in his story “Last and First Men” . . . in 1930.

These are old, well-established tropes, Ms. Brockes.  I mean, really old, and really well-established.  Perhaps Atwood addresses them in unusual ways, or with more graceful prose, or with an odd twist that previous writers haven’t (although I have a hard time believing Atwood does a better job than, say, Prof. Samuel Delany), but the point is it ain’t new.  And I can only think the reason Brockes (and other litcrits) fawn over Atwood and other literary writers is because they are considered “real” writers, writers who have made their bones cranking out poetry and “literary” fiction, not dirty, low-life genre writers.

Understand that I don’t think this phenomenon is limited to SF.  Absolutely not.  I’ve got to think that Romance fans get similarly irritated when a LitRuhChure writer cranks out what is (essentially) a Romance novel, and gets kudos for their originality.  Or how fans of kink and BDSM fiction feel over the hooplah about “Fifty Shades of Gray”, which is not only not particularly original, but doesn’t reflect the BDSM and kink community in any kind of realistic way, and is not nearly as good as Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace works are.  Or how mystery fans feel when some Big Name decides to write a mystery novel, does a mediocre job (though unfamiliarity with the genre, usually) and gets lots of press for his or her attempt.  Meanwhile, writers–excellent, high-quality writers–get ignored because they have been stamped with the “Genre” label years ago.  It’s maddening.

(And don’t get me started on what William Gibson must think of Atwood’s puckish remark ‘You can imagine a lot of people wanting to get their own DNA hair.” The 73-year-old smiles, thinly. “I’m offering it as a free gift to the world.”‘  Like Gibson–and Neal Stepheson, and Arthur C. Clarke, and hell even Gene Roddenberry (where do you think the idea for flip-phones came from?), and other SF writers too numerous to count–haven’t given endless free idea-gifts to the world.  I mean, please.)

It goes in reverse too, of course.  Neal Stephenson didn’t get nearly the amount of attention for “Snow Crash” and “The Diamond Age” that he did for the much more “literary” novel “Cryptonomicon”, which contained no SF whatsoever.  But he broke through that barrier, and now he gets noticed, even when he writes genre novels like “Anathem” (SF) or “Reamde” (thriller).

I am continually, constantly amazed at the lack of respect SF genre writers receive in the “real” literary community.  We live in an SF world, with smartphones and the Internet and the Web and tablet computers and electric cars and gene-engineered anti-cancer therapies and tons of other tech that was inspired by kids who grew up reading SF, and decided to turn it into a reality.  The top-grossing films are almost uniformly SF or comic book movies.  And yet if you don’t write plot-less character studies about dysfunctional families that live on Long Island or are set in some rural part of the South or some damn thing, if you’re presumptuous enough to like plot-driven hard-tech SF novels, well, you’re just a loser genre writer.  No matter that your ideas will influence the next generation of inventors currently dreaming up the iPhone for the 2040s, Umberto Eco’s or Martin Amis’ or Salman Rushdie’s new novel is much more important, right?

Think I’m exaggerating?  Go to iTunes, to the iBooks store.  What books are listed first? Where are the science fiction books?  Can you even find them?  (You can, but it ain’t easy.)  So on this science fictiony platform–the World Wide Web–the users of whom are more tech-savvy than any generation in history, the keepers and architects of which almost certainly grew up reading SF–if you want to find a book in your genre, what do you get?  Lots and lots of “literary” fiction, and your favorite stuff shoved into its usual ghetto.  (The irony of this appears to completely escape most eBook publishers and sellers.)

Give me patience, O Lord.

On Vaccines and Drug Company Suspicions

10 Saturday Aug 2013

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Dr. Harper (Photo courtesy of Underground Health)

In 2006 or 2007, I believe, Rick Perry attempted to use executive action to force all girls in Texas age 11-12 to get this vaccine. My daughter was 11. I spent a considerable amount of time researching the details of the vaccine, and was alarmed by several things:

  • Gardasil was developed by Merck, the same folks who developed Vioxx, an analgesic and anti-inflammatory that was shown to have caused heart attacks in people during clinical trials and after it was released to the public. It later turned out that Merck deliberately suppressed that information prior to FDA approval. They lied about killing people, in other words.
  • Merck has spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying for the adoption of this vaccine in various states, and spent heavily in Texas with state legislators and Rick Perry as well. Rick Perry (if memory serves) received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Merck.
  • There were at the time no longitudinal studies showing either the positive effects or negative side-effects of the vaccine. Texas’ 11-12 year old girls were to be used as experimental guinea pigs, in other words. At this point, we are starting to see the negative side-effects, and while the positive benefits are undeniable, they are not at the absurd rates that Merck promoted at the time.

Given this, I absolutely did not let Rick Perry and Merck use my daughter–who already has various neurological issues that could possibly be exacerbated by an experimental vaccine–as a test subject. Unfortunately, the excuse that a lot of Texas parents used at the time was that giving them this vaccine was equivalent to “promoting sex”, and absurd stand. But what that meant was that people like myself, who objected to the vaccine on medical grounds and based on reasonable suspicion of the production company, were lumped in with a lot of religious extremist idiots and declared nuts.

I have no doubt–none at all–that there will be a concerted effort by the medical community, Merck, and various political fellow travelers who want to protect Merck’s profit margins, to discredit this researcher. “She’s just one doctor”; “the benefits to women’s health vastly outweigh the possible risks”; “Research has shown this vaccine to be safer than [fill in with innocuous substance–aspirin is typical]”; etc. I wouldn’t be surprised to read in a few weeks or months how Dr. Harper lost her job, her accreditation, and her standing in the medical community–whistleblowing is *always* severely punished. (See Manning, Bradley.)

Now, there are reasonable responses to my arguments above (and I’ve heard a bunch of them).  I think that’s fine; let’s have a reasonable, data-driven discourse.  I am not an anti-vaccine nut; I think vaccines overall have done more to improve the health of people than almost anything in the history of the planet. But I wish we were in a place were suspicion of a giant drug company’s motives, and the motives of the politicians who support them and their profits, were not automatically dismissed as “anti-vaccine crazies” or “religious nuts”, or whatever. As Dr. Harper’s statements show, there are actual, valid reasons to be suspicious of drug makers’ claims of effectiveness and safety that have nothing to do with politics. Here’s hoping that we all have the freedom to question these claims in the future.

Obamacare Sucks (but Not For the Reason You Think)

05 Monday Aug 2013

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You really think the government is worse than insurance companies?
(Image courtesy of CrazyColtrane)

Obamacare sucks.  But it’s not for the reasons you think.

Us lefties have been screaming “socialized medicine!” for as long as I can remember. Literally. And folks on the right continue to insist that “the market is better!” and “If we have socialized medicine, care will be rationed!”

You know what, righties? Care is already rationed.  It’s just that right now, it’s rationed based on what insurance companies–not doctors–think is reasonable treatment for you, and how much money you can spend.  So if you think having your care rationed by some bureaucrat at an insurance company whose goal under a capitalist system is profit–this is not a value judgement on my part; that’s what the goal of all companies is under capitalism–then you should be perfectly happy.  If you trust a government bureaucrat who, although often incompetent and slow is theoretically working for you and not to make more profits, then you should be screaming “socialized medicine!” (or “Medicare for all!”) just like us looney lefties.

And this is why Obamacare sucks.  NOT because it’s a giant government takeover of the healthcare system.  God, I wish that was the case.  No, it’s because it puts profit-seeking insurance companies between you and your health care.  And the incentive for profit-seeking insurance companies is to take in as much of your money in premiums as they can, and pay out as little as possible (i.e., limit the amount of health care you receive to the absolute bare minimum).  Again:  This is not a value judgement.  This is simply how companies work under a capitalist system.  The problem here is obvious:  Having profit-seeking companies between you and your health care is obviously a Bad Thing.

Now, Tea Partiers want you to believe that having the government between you and your health care is worse.  But I believe that, while it can be bloated and inefficient and often uncaring, the government is worthy of trust more than some mercenary insurance company.  At least it’s not the governments job to take as much of your money as possible; that is the job of businesses, and insurance companies are businesses.

Here’s just one example of what I mean:

I have chronic neck pain. I’m in pain basically all the time. Working with a pain care specialist, I have managed to reduce the level of pain.  One of the things that has helped enormously is regular chiropractic visits.  However, my insurance company has a “hard limit” of 10 visits per year to the chiropractor.  Ten.  Per year.  I need to see him about once a week.  So the insurance only pays for 20% of the visits I need, and even when they “pay”, my “co-pay” is actually $60 of the total $90 charge for the visit.  Doing the math, that means that the insurance pays for 7% of the health care that my doctor has said is critical, and that has been shown to be effective.  7%.

Don’t tell me that isn’t rationing care, you right-wing jerks; the awesome free-market that you love so much is paying for seven fucking percent of the care I need.  And if I don’t get that care, I’m in agonizing fucking pain.

So you’re right in a way: Obamacare sucks.  But the reason it sucks is because it puts a for-profit industry whose goal is to provide me with as little care as possible in between me and my health care.  And that does indeed suck.

Medicare for all.  The sooner the better; my neck really hurts.

Bush Doctrine, Stand Your Ground, and the Modern G.O.P.

03 Saturday Aug 2013

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I still can’t believe so many people voted for this ignorant clown
(Image courtesy Tony Auth via Untamed Expressions))

I like to read right before I go to bed.  I’m finding that, in this age where you can find almost any type of information online, I often queue up topics for later study while I’m watching a movie or a TV show on my iPhone or iPad.  So for example, last night I was watching Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer in “Tombstone”, and it got me reading about Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson and the Old West in general as my pre-bed reading.

And in that mode, for some reason this morning I looked up the Powell Doctrine (which is a very restrained foreign policy in most respects, and which I was startled to find was based on a policy articulated originally by Casper Weinberger, who I also regarded as a dangerous lunatic who never met a weapons system he didn’t like).  Which led me to what is almost the diametric opposite of the Powell Doctrine:  The “Bush Doctrine”.  The Bush Doctrine is many things to many people, but I think most folks would agree that it has a couple of main components:  “Spreading democracy” (at gun-point, often) and “pre-emptive war” (i.e., “If we think you may eventually threaten us, or we think you’re harboring terrorists, we get to bomb your ass”).

And the more I read about pre-emptive war, the more it seemed like a national version of Florida’s “stand your ground” law.  The basics of the “stand your ground” law are that, if someone is threatening you, or you think someone is threatening you, you can take their ass out and expect to face no consequences.  George Zimmerman–the one in Florida, not the guy who sells suits in California–is the poster child for this.  He basically picked a fight with that poor kid and, when the kid (allegedly, though we’ll never know because he’s dead) started wailing on his ass, he shot him dead and got off scot free.

Which is almost exactly like Bush’s “pre-emptive war” doctrine, when you think about it.  “Saddam Hussein is a scary man who we think might have nasty weapons, so we’re going to shoot him dead!”  (I personally don’t see a whole lot of difference between this policy and the Pre-Crime unit in “Minority Report”, but then I’m a screaming lefty who has been worried about the police state for decades, so what do I know?  Oh, wait; we do have a police state now!  Guess us screaming lefties were right!)

And that led me to the realization that the vast majority of Republican policies are based on fear.  Raw, unreasoning fear.  Why do the Republicans oppose everything–literally everything–Obama proposes?  They’re afraid of President Blackenstein (to use Bill Maher’s phrase).  Why do they constantly protect guns and gun owners?  Because they’re afraid of the government.  Why do they pass so many anti-immigrant laws?  Because they’re afraid of immigrants.  Same with anti-gay laws, anti-women laws, anti-abortion laws, and on and on and on.  They’re just afraid.

Which makes sense, really.  I’ve long thought Republicans were simply bullies.  This was especially clear during the Bush years, when you had a bunch of bullies–Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney, etc.–running the government.  And at heart, bullies are scared cowards, who bully out of fear.  

I don’t have an answer, honestly, other than that the entire Republican party get some serious therapy, and maybe start mainlining Theanine.  But at the very least, we need to point out and keep pointing out their irrational fears, and do our best to stop their depraved march back to the 19th Century.  And hey, if you have any genius ideas, be sure to share them below!

A Study with Slugs: Final Chapters Available!

03 Saturday Aug 2013

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2011 Bobby Banana Slug 3 640x480

Well, I’ve been lax about notifying you–my loyal readers, whoever the heck you may be–about my recent chapter postings of my first novel, “A Study with Slugs”, on Wattpad.  Bad on me.  As I explained a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been traveling a lot, and in the previous week have been on vacation.

But I have been diligently posting chapters all the same, because I have OCD, and I just can’t stop until I’m done.  But it’s done.  You can now read Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16 (the conclusion), and Chapter 17 (the denouement in which, in fine A.C. Doyle/Holmesian style, Our Hero explains to Our Narrator all the details of the case that have not, as yet, come out.  Hey, he established the precedent; I’m just following it!)  So read and enjoy, or read and critique, or do whatever, but there you have it.

I expect to soon be posting the full novel here in ePub format for your downloading pleasure.  If you have been waiting for that, expect it sometime in the next few days.  (Though I still don’t have a cover image because my pal Paul the artist has totally fallen down on the job.  Hard for me to complain since he was doing it for free but still:  Damn!)

Coming up next will be a short story in the same milieu, with Tosh and Zack solving the mystery of the Red-headed experiment.  Don’t have to be much of a Sherlockian to know what the inspiration for that one is, yeah?  Hope you enjoy it; I’ve sure enjoyed writing it.

After that, I’m working on two separate novels:  A young-adult steampunk novel (with air ships, of course!), and a modern urban fantasy/SF/alternate worlds novel.  I don’t which one I’ll be cranking on the most, or if I’ll get distracted by another short story idea like I did with the Red-headed experiment Tosh/Zack story.  We shall see.  In the meantime, as they say: Watch This Space.