This is sort of an instant review, jotted down real fast after finishing Aliette de Bodard’s latest novella for Tor.com, Fireheart Tiger. The new book dropped a few days ago, and I had been smart enough to pre-order itr, so I got it in ebook the moment it was launched.
And I read it straight away.
This will be a spoiler-free review, of this highly recommended, unusual fantasy story.
Continue readingMy late mother used to say that if you never saw something before, then it was new. That was her main response when someone commented that a certain movie she had just discovered, or a book she had read recently, was “old”.
This idea came back to me today, when I suddenly realized I had my fill – and then some – of the incessant nostalgia that’s been pushed on us.
Today, while browsing my social media during lunchtime, I was rapidly exposed to…
And don’t get me wrong – if it’s the first time you catch those, you might as well find them great. And really, maybe you should check them out, if you’re a fan of similar stuff.
But if you know them already, then going back to them obsessively instead of looking forward is not healthy.
There were some great stories, and shows, great music and games in the past? Sure.
But there are some great stories, and shows, great music and games right now.
That’s the fun of it – evolution never stops.
And I realize it is weird this coming from someone that writes pulp-ish stories set in the ’30s, and genre fiction, and is currently re-watching the old Kolchak TV series.
But I am doing my best to avoid building chains to keep me trapped in the past.
If it’0s the first time you catch it, it’s new. And there’s good in a lot of places – past, present and future.
This market-driven nostalgia, pushed to milk the memories of the currently forty-something crowd, makes me sick.
For the next episode of Paura & Delirio, the podcast I co-host with my friend Lucy, we’re going to discuss Nosferatu, both the Murnau original and the Werner Herzog remake. As we usually do for our podcast, we are re-watching the movies to freshen up out impressions.
And as I was watching the Herzog movie, I remembered I saw it first in late 1985 or early 1986, and I checked the movie out for one reason alone – it features Isabelle Adjani, that I had first seen a few weeks before in a completely different movie: Luc Besson’s stylish thriller, Subway.
And so I stopped Nosferatu, and dug out Subway – because while I’ve seen the Herzog movie quitre a few times since 1985, it’s been thirty-five years since I last went town in the underground with Isabelle Adjani.
Continue readingI happen to be on a Sword & Sorcery roll. Big deal, you say, as if it was the first time. But really, in part this is because for Christmas I got the last volume in Glen Cook’s Dread Empire series, and so I’m finally setting out to read the whole bunch of novels in chronological order, starting with A Fortress in Shadow. In part it’s because another gift I got in my sock for the Befana festival is P.J. Thorndyke’s Barbarians at the Gates of Hollywood, this being a fun and opinionated survey of the golden age of sword & sorcery movies, to wit, the 1980s.
And as I was reading Thorndyke’s book, it happened – as it usually does – that I started feeling like re-watching these old flicks. because no one will be surprised to learn I saw each one of them at least once, and many of them (yes, I’m looking at you, Beastmaster) repeatedly, in many long summer nights, when sleep would not come, and a silly movie and a cup of ice cream was all that stood between my sanity and heat-induced madness.
And of course I’ve been watching a lot of movies since I started co-hosting the Paura & Delirio podcast with my friend Lucy – at least one movie per week, often watching it twice; more when we do our specials, like the one we did on New Year’s Eve about the Hammer Karnstein Trilogy, and what we’ll soon do with the two Nosferatu movies – Murnau’s and Herzog’s.
So the question is – do I have the time, between Cook’s book, my writing projects, my planning and building a vegetable garden and the idea of acquiring a new skill in February… do I have the time for these old sword & sorcery films? Say one per week, following P.J. Thorndyke’s excellent guide?
And, should I do it … what next?
I could blog about them, of course.
And maybe do something more – a film or two will maybe find a place in Paura & Delirio – because of the contiguity between sword & sorcery and horror/weird fiction.
But what of the rest?
I’ll have to find an idea.
But right now, I’ll have to go dig in the box of old DVDs for the titles in my viewing list that are not on VHS.
This is going to be fun…
And so finally the new Lupin TV series hit the screens, as a Netflix Original, and I spent a day watching it while my computer system was slowly grinding back to normal. Together with the fifth season of The Expanse, this was for me the highest expected show in the late2020/early 2021 season.
So, is it any good?
Short review: it is very good.
Continue readingAs noted in the comments to yesterday’s post, the news of the death of former Bond Girl Tanya Roberts have been greatly exaggerated – and indeed, I am very happy to publish a denial of what I wrote yesterday.
So, in a way, 2021 starts with the resurrection of Sheena, queen of the jungle.
Well played, 2021.
Well played.
Back when I was a kid, we used to go to the movies on New Year’s Day, or in the following Sunday – a film with all the family in the afternoon, and then a stop in a cafeteria or a tea room somewhere for some hot chocolate and a few cookies, and then home to heat up the leftovers from yesterday’s New Year’s Eve dinner or today’s New Year’s Day lunch.
Those days are gone forever, to quote the poet, but I still like to watch a new movie at the start of the new year, and as luck would have it, the masters of the streaming platforms have decided to start distributing on the first day of 2021 Roseanne Liang’s very pulp-ish action thriller Shadow in the Cloud.
And so I watched it, and it was a perfect way to start off the year.
Karavansara 