Culture from the darker side

Blood Avatar is the newest book in the new Mechwarrior book series. It departs in it’s usual storytelling a bit as it is more of a “whodunit” than a classic Battletech Novel.

A car accident near Farway on Denebola quickly turns out to be a murder. The local Sheriff finds himself in over his head and requests help from nearby New Bonn. The help arrives in the person of Jack Ramsey a suspended cop from New Bonn who is legendary (and suspended) because of his vigilante approach to take down a child murdering psycho.

It quickly becomes clear that there is more involved than just a straight murder, it becomes even more clear once the Legat’s office gets involved and soon Ramsey, the Sheriff and everybody else involved in the investigation realizes that this is far bigger than even Denebola.

Battletech books were always about the “larger picture” where we got a glimpse into the corridors of power and the devastating consequences decisions can have on the battlefield.

“Blood Avatar” is different, as it concentrates on the “small things”, on the people on the ground, far away from the big decision makers and overall more “grounded”.

So, is it a good book? If you are looking for the standard Mech battles then you may find yourself disappointed. If you like mystery and crime though, you will enjoy it. It is nicely written, though a bit cheating as there really is no indication about the “whodunit”, but it is enjoyable none the less.

The book also hints at “larger things” that may still be coming and that should make the new books a lot more interesting as well.

Rating: 3.5/5

A lot of people never really break into the mainstream, simply because they don’t have the exposure. One such people was Peter Jackson, though a couple of years all of this changed when he turned J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” into three movies. Peter Jackson always had made good movies, in the realm of fantasy, but now he also got the big bucks from Hollywood to really go for it.

King Kong, was a project he originally wanted to do back in 1997, but because of some rights issues he went on to do LotR first.

Peter Jackson’s King Kong is pretty much a retelling of the original 1933 version added with his own charm. There are numerous references to the old movie and even to some of Peter Jackson’s own movies (I leave it to the viewer to find them).

The movie clocks in a bit more than three hours, but while this is indeed a long movie, Jackson nails the timing very well. I never felt bored or wished they would “fast forward” certain scenes. The movie, on the surface, can be taken as an actionadventure movie in the lines of Indiana Jones, but Jackson gives us a hint early on that this is not quite what he is shooting for. Two of his characters are talking about the book “The heart of Darkness” and the motivation of the protagonist to actually go ahead to face certain doom. As one of the characters says: “So it is not an adventure after all?” Same is true for King Kong, it is, in essence a love story, between Kong and the girl.

The effects in King Kong are amazingly, Andy Sirkins (Gollum) is back to perform as Kong and he once again gives an amazing performance. The rest of the cast is just as good, Adrien Brody as the playwright Jake Driscoll, Joe Black as the movie maker Carl Denham is a bit less over the top than in his last movies, but still utterly funny to watch. Naomi Watts as the damsel in distress nails it as well, and of course no monster movie would be complete without the German skipper who senses doom and is portrait by Thomas Kretschmann.

King Kong is not a unique movie, it is a very well executed movie though. It is fun to watch, it is pop-corn cinema at it’s finest and three hours well spent.

Rating 4/5

Having grown up in Germany I never read any of the Narnia books, so watching the movie I cannot really make any comparison into how accurate it is in relationship to the books, I do not have any fond childhood memories of the characters and settings, the movie has to stand on it’s own for me to work.

Leading up to the release of Narnia in several different articles it was clear that Disney hoped to have the next big “Lord of the Rings” on it’s hand. This is not as far fetched as one may think considering that both Authors were contemporaries and apparently knew each other quite well. The other big news was the “christian overtone” of the movie that had the christian right in the US cheering and trying to promote the film as it had the idea that there was a strong message in it that needed to be communicated to the audience.

Being exposed to this kind of information upfront obviously doesn’t leave me quite unshaded, especially the remark about the Lord of the Rings, movies and books I both truly enjoyed. Narnia itself was obviously promoted around the large epic battle, the struggle against the Witch and the triumph of good. So the stage was set.

The first thing one notices is the wonderful music that carries the movie at times. The train ride in the beginning has a beautiful piece of music accompanying it and makes me consider to actually buy the soundtrack. Unfortunately the piece is rather short and the mostly the music just plays along without causing any large emotional involvement.

The world of Narnia is, when we first enter it, a frozen wasteland, which is due to the rule of the Witch who seems to draw her power from the winter elements. When our heroes enter Narnia though, they quickly start breaking her spell and the snow and ice are thawing, but not before the Witch manages to corrupt one of the siblings to betray the others.

Soon, they come to realize their destiny, and although reluctantly decide to follow the prophecy.

The film makers clearly try to position Narnia in the same league as The Lord of the Rings, this is clear in the sceneries chosen as well as the amount of CG characters that are being created. But it doesn’t work. The world and the movie feels flat, in part it may be the actors who at times appear flat, but a large part of this is also the (at times) bad CG effects.

One of the main CG characters is a couple of beavers, which has been extremely well animated and they look life like, the voice casting for them is also at the top of it’s class.

Unfortunately the rest of the movie doesn’t quite live up to it. The movie fails to really enthrall, and I think the worst is the huge battle scene at the end. There is no sense of largess, there is no real “carnage” comparing this battle to the battle at Helms Deep is like comparing a masterpiece drawing to that of your five year old. Both have their charm, but one is engaging to everybody and the other one is only special to you.

Narnia clearly had some potential, but it seems to suffer from the “well, we are Disney” problem, which leads to a movie that, though entertaining at times, is not very engaging.

Where The Lord of the Rings features breathtaking sceneries which warrant the big screen, the scenery in Narnia never quite shines as much. Overall, it is a brave attempt, but a more experienced or visionary director (or a producer with more guts) would have really pulled it off and created a more memorable movie.

Rating: 2/5

Glass Soup was written by Jonathan Carroll an author I admire, as he can paint wonderful images in my mind with his words. Neil Gaiman seems to agree with me, judging by the quote on the cover:

Jonathan Carroll is a changer. He’s one of the special ones, one of the few…. He gives you his eyes to see with, and he gives you the world all fresh and honest and new.

Neil Gaiman

Glass Soup continues the story of Vincent Ettrich, his new wife Isabelle and his son to be born Anjo, who all thought that they had overcome the obstacles and are now in for a smooth cruise towards the birth of Anjo. Yet, Chaos has different plans and once again Isabelle, Anjo and Vincent are drawn into the fight, both in our world and in the land of the dead.

As with most of Carroll’s latest books it is set in Vienna, a city where he has been living for the last two decades, yet like with his other books the reality can easily be slightly “off”, not only in the world of the dead, but also in the world of the living, where things aren’t always what they seem to be.

Carroll’s strength is that, unlike King, he describes the world his characters are living in, but not to the point of bore. He has the ability to give us enough details to spark our own imagination and “fill in the blanks” a true “feast” for the mind.

Rating: 5/5 (if you haven’t read White Apples 4.5/5)

Fortress Republic could be considered a dark moment in the new story line. The Republic is at the verge of falling under the onslaught of the old houses and clans who want to regain the territory they gave up after the end of the Word of Blake Jihad and Exchar Jonah Levin only sees one last way to safe Devlin Stone’s dream: Pull up the drawbridges, safe terra and Prefacture X in the hopes to come back one day and rebuild Stone’s dream.

In Fortress Republic Loren L. Coleman, one of the new “stars” of the Battletech universe for the last couple of years, and in a way replacing Michael A. Stackpole as the “center piece” of the story writing, leads us deeper into the decline of the republic and the rise of old tensions that had been put to rest with the end of the Jihad. We become witness to the “end” of a dream and the start of a nightmare for many people in what is known as the inner sphere.

As in his previous books Coleman doesn’t really pull any punches, but rather embraces the carnage that is politics and war and further drives us forward at a relentless pace leaving shatter bodies, dreams and ambitions behind. We get a glimpse at the struggle that is brewing within the houses and a hint at the great plans that are upon us.

In a way, the last seventeen books were a “prelude” to setting the stage and in this, the 18th, he is starting to pull the trigger.

The piece and relative calm that was so dominant (by Battletech standards anyways) in the previous books is quickly coming to an end. The civil war within the republic seems to be deiced, but ultimatly it seems to be a hollow victory with way larger one already waiting in the wings to take it’s place.

It remains to be seen if MW Dark Age can come back to the former glory that was Battletech, the game clearly has started to change in the books and there is hope that this will carry us forward into a more exciting time, more intrigue and more cloak and dagger, both on the political stage of the inner sphere as well as on the battle field.

And maybe, one day, we will learn who caused the blackout and set all of this in motion.

Though we may have to wait a bit for a new story, it seems there won’t be a new book until summer 2006.

Hollywood tends to be a bit “behind times” when it comes to critiquing current events, mainly because Hollywood itself is in the business of making money and you usually do not make a lot of money criticizing something that may be a fresh wound in your audiences mind.

Thus, the “three year delay” of Syriana is not surprising, what is surprising is that it only took three years for mainstream Hollywood to pick up on the topic of the price of oil.

Syriana is a political thriller that unfolds against the intrigue of the global oil industry and the power brokers in Washington. From the players brokering back-room deals in Washington to the men toiling in the oil fields of the Persian Gulf, the film’s multiple storylines weave together in an attempt to show the current world we are living in.

As a career CIA operative (George Clooney) begins to uncover the disturbing truth about the work he has devoted his life to, an up-and-coming oil broker (Matt Damon) faces an unimaginable family tragedy and finds redemption in his partnership with an idealistic Gulf prince (Alexander Siddig). A corporate lawyer (Jeffrey Wright) faces a moral dilemma as he finesses the questionable merger of two powerful U.S. oil companies, while across the globe, a disenfranchised Pakistani teenager (Mazhar Munir) falls prey to the recruiting efforts of a charismatic cleric. Each plays their small part in the vast and complex system that powers the industry, unaware of the explosive impact their lives will have upon the world.

The movie is complex, the “strands” seem to be running independently from each other and yet they all lead to the same thing in the end.

The movie is part Documentary, part entertainment. It is a complex web that has been woven by writer Stephen Gaghan and it takes some time to digest the whole thing.

What sets this movie truly apart is to show that ultimately we are all connected, be it the executive in the board room who is willing to sacrifice an individual in order to get what he wants or the prayer school teacher who sacrifices his pupils to further his goal.

The movie isn’t easy to digest because looking at all the connections it should be clear to us that in the end our way of life has a price, a hidden one, which we may not see.

That the movie found wide distribution is interesting, if the audience will pick up on it will remain to be seen, it was interesting to see just how busy the theater was at the noon presentation, though the average age in the theater must have been somewhere in the mid 40s.

Rating: 4.5/5

In the realm of “slashermovies” there isn’t really a lot of “new” stuff that comes out these days.

The Scream Series in the mid nineties caused a bunch of copy cats (I know what you did last summer etc.) and that was about it. It was a trip back down memory lane to the seventies where horror movies were all the rage and the girl who had sex died a horrible death.

Enter Cry_Wolf. A slasher movie, or so it seems, but is it?

When a young woman is found murdered, a group of local prep school students decide to further scare their classmates by spreading online rumors that a serial killer called “The Wolf” is on the loose. By describing themselves as “The Wolf’s” next victims, the students’ game is to see how many people they can convince - and if anyone will uncover the lie.

But when the described victims actually do start turning up dead, suddenly no one knows where the lies end and the truth begins.

And then…. there is the twist, which I don’t want to spoil here.

It didn’t keep me on the “edge of the seat”, and it (seems to) follow the rules of the genre, but I admit I was surprised by the twist towards the end when some people may just go out and say “oh”.

Cry_Wolf is entertaining, it messes a bit with your head, as do the characters in the movie, and at the end you may look at slasher movies a bit different. Anything but dump and rather refreshing without resorting to comedy like a lot of the other horror movies lately did.

Rating: 4/5

Moving from an animated feature into the live action and big screen usually doesn’t bode to well. There are quite a few examples where the transition went anything but smoothly. One reason being that it is rather hard at times to get a drawing life on the screen. There isn’t a lot of limitations when drawing a character, with real people it looks different, even if you have now computers that allow to push the limits out even further.

Aeon Flux came to us via MTV in the early nineties, and I have to admit I never “got it”. I was fascinated by the episodes I caught, by the drawings and the pieces of the story I got though, I was impressed.

So now in 2005 Charlize Theron is acting as Aeon Flux and the transition from the small screen to the big screen and it is….. good.

The movie is set 400 years in the future, when disease has wiped out the majority of the earth’s population except for one walled, protected city-state, Bregna, ruled by a congress of scientists. The story centers on Aeon Flux (Theron), the top operative in the underground ‘Monican’ rebellion, led by The Handler (Frances McDormand). When Aeon is sent on a mission to kill a government leader, she uncovers a world of secrets.

The movie is stylish from a design standpoint and just “fantastic” enough to make one wonder at times. Although the story doesn’t provide a lot of “twists and turns” it is entertaining, action oriented and even tries to have some moral.

Overall it is not really something extraordinary, but the melange of visuals and actions is appealing. A lower key version o f “The Island” if you must which was beautifully shot, though thin on story. Similar (with less large explosions) can be said about Aeon Flux.

If you enjoyed the original TV show you won’t be disappointed in watching the movie, if you like stylish sceneries and action you will enjoy it to. If neither of this appeals to you you should move on.

Rating: 3.5/5