Author: Alex

Categories
worldcon

[Worldcon] The WSFS Business Meeting: How the F*** Does It Work?

Normally I don’t bother putting my notes online until after the convention because I’d rather be going to more panels and taking more notes, but I wanted to put this up immediately because I consider it important and there weren’t a whole lot of people at the panel. And while I’m sure a lot of vets already know this stuff, I didn’t. Hell, I didn’t even know I could go to the WSFS meeting last year! (If you are at Worldcon, GO TO IT.)

First off, let me explain why you really really should care about the WSFS meeting. This is the place where amendments to the constitution of the WSFS are decided. Which means, in a very practical sense, this is how we decide how the Hugo Awards will work. (Among other things, obviously, but to me the Hugos are what has my attention.) Never forget that the Hugo Awards are ours. They belong to everyone who attends Worldcon or has a supporting membership.

There are a few items I personally consider important this year:

1) The YA Hugo

2) The “No Cheap Voting” motion

3) Trying to kill the fan category Hugos

So yes, I think this thing is important. I think you should consider it important too. And here’s what I learned from just going to this panel. I feel more prepared for the preliminary meeting tomorrow morning. (Hope I’ll see some of you there.)

* * *

THE WSFS BUSINESS MEETING: HOW DOES IT WORK

Martin Easterbrook, Mark L. Olson, Kevin Standlee (K)

The preliminary meeting doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it’s where the agenda is set and THAT IS HUGE.

One of the items is object and consideration which is special motion. If 2/3 of the people in the room say “this is stupid, we shouldn’t discuss it” then the motion is killed. The person who made the motion isn’t even allowed to explain when this comes up. This means “we don’t even want to discuss this.” This is generally just supposed to be to kill turkeys; people will vote to keep motions even if they disagree with them as long as they seem like they should be debated.

One year they killed four motions in five minutes because someone kept throwing in censures for individuals they didn’t like.

This is not going to be a good meeting for frivolous motions. (There is a lot on the table.) Apparently in a past year there was a motion objecting to Pluto’s demotion.

This is a democracy where there are no elected representatives. If you want something to happen, you need to get out there and convince people to vote. Also need people who know the business meeting process well.

Mark: The single most important thing you can do in submitting new business (after just being substantive) is doing a good write-up of it. Express it in good, clear writing!

Audience: People familiar with the business meeting will help you write your motion often even if they disagree with it.

Audience: Is it required that the person who proposed the motion be there at the meeting?

K: No, but if you aren’t there, others will be able to interpret it as they like. The proposer gets to make the opening argument but that’s it. Once you submit a motion you lose complete control of it.

K: There is no point in debating constitutional issues on motions at the preliminary meeting. But you can propose to fiddle with them at the prelim meeting because that is the place where it can be killed or sent to the next meeting. Motions can be amended at the preliminary meeting and those are given five minutes of debate. (So people can take a proposal and really just rewrite/change/regroove it if they’re good at this.)

The motion is not yours any more. The only way to change a motion once it’s hit the meeting is with these amendments.

Mark: You can get into amendment wars if you think a stupid amendment is proposed. You cannot amend an amendment while it is under discussion.

K: Amendments are a pretty low ranking motion. You can stack up motions of different primacy.

Objection to consideration can only be done IMMEDIATELY. It has to be the first thing that gets done.

You are supposed to stand and be recognized; if you are physically unable you can call out. You can’t get in line by standing and waiting. You have to be recognized by the chair.

You don’t have to know all the rules. The chairman is supposed to know them and will help you. You can make parliamentary inquiries.

Objection to consideration is only for a constitutional amendment. You cannot object to consideration of an amendment. You have to just vote it down.

Things that are not constitutional amendments will be decided at the preliminary meeting.

Martin: “Tabling” a motion means two different things in American vs. British English. American = not going to come back to it, British = take it up immediately.

K: Use of “Table” as a verb is thus discouraged.

Moving on to Saturday. The agenda is set, the frivolous amendments have been killed, all non-amendments have been dealt with.

Mark: Committees are normally for incoherent motions. Happen maybe one out of three years.

K: First person recognized gets to speak. There is set debate time, divided between the two sides. There is a time keeper. Once you have finished giving your statement you sit down. The sides take turns until no one else wants to speak, you run out of time, or the meeting approves by 2/3 to end debate. A 2/3 vote can also extend the time. Normally time extensions are done by unanimous consent.

Don’t object just for the sake of form. It wastes everyone time.

Closing the debate and calling the question are the same thing.

[They use Roberts Rules of Order]

“I move to call the question on the stack” – that means getting them all over with.

Note: Debate does not have to be factual. You cannot interrupt people to correct them.

Mark: WSFS does allow the point of irrelevant interjection.

K: Sometimes amendments/procedure will eat up all the debate time and you have to ask more time to actually debate the motion itself.

Martin: If you have limited time, you really need to get your best speakers lined up and ready to go. Sometimes your supporters can be your worst enemies if they are incoherent ramblers.

Amendments are allowed that day. They are move to amend motions.

K: You can’t bring up amendments that were dealt with on the previous day unless there are weird circumstances.

If the chair rules on any procedural motion and you don’t like it, you move to “appeal the ruling of the chair.” Then the chair has to explain what they did and why, then you say why you didn’t like it, and debate ensues. “Those who wish to sustain the ruling of the chair…” It takes a majority opposed to the ruling of the chair to overrule; a tie means the chair’s ruling remains.

Unanimous consent

Aye and nay are rarely used: people started shouting

A lot is done by uncounted shows of hands rather than counted shows. If the vote is close enough, they do serpentine, where all one side will stand, then count off one by one.

Almost everything requires a majority vote. The chairman only votes if his vote will actually have an effect on the outcome.

If something is voted on this year, it DOES NOT take effect next year. It has to go to the next Worldcon, get approved there as well, THEN it goes into effect the year after.

Sunday is for site selection questions.

Mark: The formality is there so we can find out what people at the meeting actually want, not just what the loudest people want.

K: The WSFS is a LARP with Roberts Rules as the rulebook. There are people who go just for the entertainment.

Mark: I encourage you to come. If you speak, do your best to speak clearly.

Martin: Because of the restricted time, it can look like a cross between a magician and a sumo wrestling match if you don’t understand the rules.

Categories
steampunk writing

Available for Pre-Order: Blood in Elk Creek

Coming 9/6/13: Blood in Elk Creek – This is the longest novella I’ve written to date – 36K words of adventure, mystery, and snark for Captain Ramos, Colonel Douglas, and a horse named Dolly. And if you’ve been wondering about the Infected, they’re coming for you now.

I’m really excited to share this one with you guys and I hope that you like it. Less than two weeks away!

Once called the Great Plains, the Dead Plains are a place in which no sane citizen of the Duchies dares set foot. The Infected roam the lands in starving packs and rare is the man who returns alive from an expedition. But when one of the regiments of the Grand Duchy of Denver disappears into those wilds under false pretenses, Colonel Geoffrey Douglas dares the Dead Plains to investigate. And Captain Marta Ramos, infamous pirate and thorn in his side, is not far behind.

Foul events are afoot in the Black Hills: Lakota hunting camps leveled, and the Infected move as an army in purposeful, terrifying ways. Captain Ramos and Colonel Douglas must form an uneasy truce and venture deep into the hostile terrain of the Black Hills to discover what has prompted this invasion and how to stop it.

If the Infected don’t kill them first.

bloodinelkcreek-500

Marta looked upstream, but the view was occluded by rocks and more pine trees. There was a loud splash, followed a moment later by another surge of clouded water.

She levered herself to her feet, then drew her machete. The heavy blade felt strange and clumsy in her left hand. Feeling a bit drunk on adrenalin, she made her way around the rock with exaggerated care.

The stream took a sharp turn on the other side of the rocks, widening. Two corpses were laid neatly out in the shallow water. A coyote stood over one, worrying at its arm—the source of the splashes and the gouts of old, coagulated blood.

Blood.

Hand still clutching the machete, Marta bent over and retched, forcibly ejecting all of the water she’d just drunk from her stomach. She wiped her mouth with a handful of grass and looked up to find the coyote now staring at her, a profoundly unimpressed look on its face and a forearm and hand dangling from its jaws.

Marta’s stomach cramped again. Stop that, she mentally commanded herself. It was a reaction entirely in her mind, nothing but fear.

Tail at a cocky angle, the coyote trotted off with its prize, though the animal did give her a wide berth.

Marta approached the bodies with more trepidation than she had ever felt when faced with any number of corpses. Neither of the corpses had heads; each simply had a stump blackened with blood and rot. She recognized the look of the cuts, knew them before she’d even pulled her goggles properly on and snapped in one of the surviving magnifying lenses.

They’d each had their head removed with two or three strikes from a machete. She’d had to make similar cuts herself before, more times than she cared to consider. Each corpse wore the tattered remains of leather clothing, just trousers and no shirts, feet yet covered with moccasins. A few decorations partially obscured with muck and blood were made from colored porcupine quills; this was not the clothing of those who resided in the duchies.

All of these small details, building readily into a disturbing picture in Marta’s mind, felt curiously beside the point. Her left hand shook as she raised it to her goggles again, flipping through the loupes until she found those of treated calcite. The delicate lenses had cracked and crazed into a thousand tiny rhombic shapes, but even through that she saw the telltale glow that oozed from the bodies, that swirled through the water that touched them and confirmed her worst terror.

The corpses and stream, the stream she’d so greedily drunk from, were alive with Infection. Bright flecks showed on her left hand, which she’d used to scoop water to her mouth. A horrible sort of laugh squeezed from her throat.

She’d survived the most impressive aeroplane crash of her career just long enough to kill herself.

Preorder now! 

#SFWAPro

Categories
movie

Elysium

Finally, finally saw Elysium. Glad I did.

As scifi movies go, I’m honestly fairly pleased with it. Elysium was directed by Neill Blomkamp, the guy who brought us District 9, and it’s easy to see the thematic similarities between the two: haves and have-nots, segregation, abuse of power. District 9 was very much about Apartheid, however. Elysium goes more toward the increasing distance between rich and poor, down to the distribution of healthcare. And of course, there are quite a few very pointed scenes regarding illegal immigration, well-suited perhaps because those movie was set in Los Angeles rather than Johannesburg.

One thing I found very cool about Elysium was just how much Spanish was used in the movie (note: though I have no idea if the Spanish was any good) and how natural it felt. Blomkamp imagined a future Los Angeles with a heavily Hispanic population, which I think made it feel more realistic. (Also made the talk on the space habitat about illegal immigrants and the threat they pose all the more pointed.) Of the major supporting characters, two were played by Brazilian actors and one by a Mexican actor.

Elysium is decent scifi. It asks “what if” and then explores how humanity might change around that development, embracing it or fighting it or using it. I thought the space habitat for which the movie is named was pretty interesting, particularly that it was set up so the atmosphere was kept inside entirely by the rotational force that created the artificial gravity. (Kind of like a miniature Ring World.) Though occasionally some of the scifi elements were also plainly set up to force the plot in a particular direction to stay on message, which is not so good.

 

To be honest, I think the only reason I’m at all disappointed in Elysium is because I’ve watched and loved District 9 and can’t help but compare the two. That doesn’t seem too unfair with their undeniable similarities. While Elysium benefits from a much larger budget than District 9 (and Matt Damon was more than satisfactorily Matt Damon in it)–the special effects are excellent and I didn’t feel they were overdone–it’s also much more heavy-handed and much clumsier in the way it deals with issues. It’s much more of a big budget scifi/action movie than District 9. Which was honestly to its detriment, I think.

SPOILERS

Continue reading “Elysium”
Categories
movie

The World’s End

The Worlds End is the final installment of the “cornetto” trilogy written by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. It’s a satisfying end to a set of fabulously hilarious movies.

I don’t make any secret of the fact that Hot Fuzz is my favorite movie ever. (Or as I like to call it: the greatest movie ever made.) I’ll admit, I didn’t like The Worlds End quite as much. But that’s kind of like complaining about the sex because you only had three orgasms instead of five and are still capable of walking afterwards.

There’s a really different tone to this move than there was to the other two. Shaun of the Dead is very much a zombie apocalypse movie, Hot Fuzz is a buddy cop film, but The Worlds End doesn’t fit so neatly into the apocalyptic move (since honestly, most movies in that slice of the genre are actually post-apocalyptic) nor quite into the alien invasion slot. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, because this movie feels much less like it’s film tropes with a side of feelings. The feelings and relationships are the red meat of The World’s End, with the blue-blooded and easily broken not-robots (robot is a word that means slave, yanno, it’s not accurate) as more of the backdrop.

And there was a lot of meat there. I very much enjoyed that it was Nick Frost’s turn to be the competent guy who has it together, with Simon Pegg as the colossal fuck up. There’s so much in the movie about how you can never go home, how you have to move forward with your life, and it makes a compelling case for an idea I’ve believed in for years: there is something seriously, seriously wrong with anyone who believes high school was the best life ever gets. Or, more accurate, there is something seriously wrong with their adult life.

Because the movie is about a set of adults going back to their old home and interacting with their past, there’s a lot of other great stuff in there that just touches my nerd heart. One of the characters interacts with someone who bullied him, and it just about broke my heart for all it was hilarious.  It’s also the reminder of the wild and crazy free-spirited guy/girl who tends to be presented as an ideal in movies (hello, manic pixie dream girl) isn’t necessarily the kind of person with whom you want to be friends. There’s also a few lovely stabs about the homogenization of local culture.

And it’s funny. It’s laugh out-loud funny. (And sometimes cringe in your seat funny when Simon Pegg’s Gary King is being particularly awful.) About the only complaints I have is that I felt like there was a teeny something missing between where we finally see Gary’s crisis and where he ends up, and that I felt like the arguing at the end (you’ll see what I mean when I get there) went on a tad too long for my tastes. But maybe it needed to for Bill Nighy’s excellent closing line as the king of the nobots.

See it. If you liked the other two movies, definitely see it. I’m hoping to go again this weekend. Hopefully with fewer problems getting there.

Because on the way to the Alamo, I had an adventure with my housemate. The kind of adventure I prefer to never have. We were trying to make it to the theater so we could also see Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz beforehand. But instead, my housemate’s car (an automatic) stopped changing gears, and then white smoke began to pour out from under the hood. So that was fun. We managed to pull off into a commercial/light industrial park that literally had nothing but fenced-in lots and had a nail-biting time trying to find somewhere to park the car before it died entirely. Then I remembered HEY I HAVE AAA, and at least we got a free tow back to the apartment. (So yes, I’ll be renewing AAA, it was worth it for that alone.)

The moral of the story, kids? If you know something is busted in your car, don’t procrastinate about fixing it.

Categories
writing

Biweekly(?) writing update #1

Okay, we’ll see if this is going to be a thing. An awful lot of writing stuff seems to be happening to me these days. This covers a bit more than a week, though–just everything that’s happened in my awesome writing life since the last update on July 31.

  1. I have sold a story to Lakeside Circus for their first issue! This is my new record for fastest acceptance ever, at 16 hours. From their post is sounds like issue #1 will be coming out at the end of NOvember. And that issue #1 is currently only about 1/4 full, so if you’re a writerly type you might want to check that out. They pay $.01/word.
  2. Blood in Elk Creek has a cover! Isn’t it purty? The next adventure of Captain Ramos (aka: Captain Ramos is a giant pain in the ass to someone) will be out on 9/6, so less than a month away.bloodinelkcreek-500
  3. The Ugly Tin Orrery was reviewed by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam of Short Story Review. Spoiler: she liked it. The fact that she enjoyed it when she has previously not liked steampunk fills me with the sort of glee I normally reserve for puppies.
  4. In other Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam love stories, Comes the Huntsman also made it to her list of top 10 fairy tale short stories on SF Signal.

  5. I well be participating in the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading at Worldcon! The reading is at 10 AM on Sunday you should come see me.

Also, WANTED:

  1. I’d like to try start getting some guest blogging going. If you’re interested in putting a post of yours in this modest little space, I’d be happy to have you (WITHIN REASON). Just drop me a line on twitter (@katsudonburi) or at katsuhiro at gmail dot com.
  2. My ravenous ego demands more reviews, because the first two have been so awesomesauce. MORE REVIEWS I SAY. If you have a book review blog or column, I will make it rain digital ARCs for you. Or, you know, politely send one to your inbox all while showering you with kisses from across the internet.

#SFWAPro

Categories
rants

I Hate Tipping

I really wish we’d just get rid of tipping in restaurants and go to paying servers an actual, living wage. I haven’t been a fan of the practice ever since I went to other countries where tipping isn’t the norm or isn’t the main source of income and saw that it’s something that actually works. And I just got thinking about it more today because of this article from Slate.

As an aside, I’ve often been informed that our service is superior in America because our servers have to hustle for tips. Having eaten out in Japan (no tipping), Germany, Australia, and England (places where tipping happens but is not the primary source of income), my totally anecdotal experience says: not really. I’ve had both good service and bad service in every country in which I’ve ever had a meal. I’ve had courteous servers and rude ones, dedicated servers and ones who obviously could not give less of a shit. The only true difference I’ve noticed is the pacing of the meal varies quite a bit outside of America. And when I mentioned that, I was informed by my German coworkers that it has nothing to do with servers not hustling. They just think Americans are fucking mental (I’m paraphrasing here) for making our meals as short and fast as we do. So there’s that.

Anyway, I’ve now had a waitress as a housemate for nearly half a year, and that’s only served to increase my complete dislike for the way we deal with tipping in America. Here’s why I don’t like it:

1) It makes budgeting very difficult for the people who have to live on tips. With no set hourly wage (beyond the laughable tipped employee minimum that is generally under or way under $5/hour) servers don’t know exactly how much money they’re going to bring in on a given day, let alone a given week or month. If you bring in enough that any fluctuations are just gravy, that’s probably not so bad. But I get the distinct impression that’s not the case across the board.

1a) As a side note, since servers are paid so little hourly, that makes it relatively low cost for managers to overstaff their servers, which means that each server has fewer tables, gets fewer tips, makes less money. So it may be good for you because you’re the server’s only table so she’s very attentive, but it sucks a lot for your waitress.

2) It punishes servers for things outside their control. Okay, sure, if you see your server ignoring your empty iced tea glasses for twenty minutes while he stands by the kitchen and texts his friends, I suppose that’s fair enough. But I’ve seen servers get shorted on tips because the food came out slowly (generally the kitchen’s fault), because a hamburger/steak/etc wasn’t cooked to the desired degree (also quite possibly the kitchen’s fault), or because the server was slow because she was trying to run the entire floor herself (likely the manager’s fault for not scheduling properly). Which functionally means the server is getting screwed out of money for mistakes made by someone who is paid hourly wages or a salary. That feels profoundly unfair to me.

3) People just don’t tip enough, period. It appalls me that today, in 2013, there are still people who think it’s acceptable to go to a restaurant if they can pay for their meal but not for the tip. There is no excuse for that. But on the other hand, it would be wonderful if all prices just automatically included a decent tip (hm, like a service charge!) so you knew exactly how much you’d be paying before you went into a meal.

4) I don’t buy that it makes service better or motivates servers. If nothing else, if your server has busted their ass and still gotten fucked out of a couple of tips by a misbehaving kitchen or stingy diners, I would be seriously shocked if they felt any motivation to hustle after that. Which will then just perpetuate a viscious cycle of bad service and bad tips and bad service and bad tips.

5) It does something weird to the power dynamic. The server is employed by the restaurant owner. They should be getting paid the majority of their wages by the restaurant owner. By having them work for tips, in a way that puts the server in a position of being more employed by the customers than by the owner. Which puts them in an incredibly bad position, say, if a customer asks them to break the restaurant rules. Maintain the rules and piss off the customer and then get a bad tip? Or break the rules, maybe get a good tip, but risk being fired or causing trouble for your employer? Yikes.

6) Basically, what that article said about tip disparities along lines of gender, race, etc. It’s shitty and unfair to put someone’s livelihood in the hands of people who might be on a power trip or let their personal prejudices determine how far they’ll open their wallets. At least when you decide you’re going to be an artist, unless you’re totally blind you go in under the full knowledge you’ll be depending upon the kindness of strangers. Servers are supposedly people with regular jobs. (And often, hah, they are artists trying to supplement their kindness of strangers income with more kindness of strangers income. Awesome.)

7) Frankly, I think it sucks for consumers as well. While I like the feeling of leaving a big tip and hoping I’ve made someone’s day, you know what I don’t like? Feeling horrible and guilty about all the assholes that tip like shit. Particularly if I’m in a big party. I’ve been forced to make up for what I feel is the stinginess of friends and acquaintances more times than I’d like to recall.

For fuck’s sake, just pay these people a living wage and let me eat my hamburger without wondering if my server is going to make enough money tonight to justify the gas he spent to get to the restaurant.

(Until then, I’m still going to keep tipping 20% minimum. It makes the math easier.)

Categories
geology

So you wanted to know about my research?

Now you can read the whole enchilada for free! It’s a steamy but heart-wrenching story about a river and the course of its life as the world heats up and the mammals become ever tinier and more cute. Sandstones! Siltstones! Mudstones! Who will be swept away next? Will I need dental work from all those rocks I ate in Bremen? Will I overcome the cat vomit yellow sandstone or will it succeed in ruining my life? The answers can be found inside:

Sedimentary and climatic response to the Second Eocene Thermal Maximum in the McCullough Peaks Area, Bighorn Basin, Wyoming, U.S.A.
by Acks, Rachael, M.S., UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER, 2013, 81 pages
Abstract:

The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) was followed by a lesser hyperthermal event, called ETM2, at ∼53.7 Ma (Zachos et al., 2010). The carbon isotope excursion and global temperature increases for ETM2 were approximately half those of the PETM (Stap et al., 2010). The paleohydrologic response to this event in the continental interior of western North America is less well understood than the response to PETM warming. Although ETM2 is better known from marine than continental strata, the hyperthermal has been identified from outcrops of the alluvial Willwood Formation from the Deer Creek and Gilmore Hill sections of the McCullough Peaks area in the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming (Abels et al., 2012). The presence of ETM2 in Willwood Formation strata provides a rare opportunity to examine local continental climactic and sedimentary response to this hyperthermal.

Core drilled at Gilmore Hill was described and analyzed geochemically. The core consists of paleosols formed on mudrocks that are interbedded with siltstones and sandstones. Carbon isotope analysis of carbonate nodules from paleosols in the core shows that the top of the core, below a prominent yellow sandstone, most likely records the very beginning of the carbon isotope excursion that marks ETM2 (Maibauer and Bowen, unpublished data).The rest of the CIE was likely either not recorded due to sandstone deposition or removed by erosion prior to the deposition of the sandstone.

Analysis of bulk oxides in the paleosols using the methods of Sheldon et al. (2002) and Nordt and Driese (2010b) provides quantitative estimates of precipitation through the core section. The estimates reveal drying over the ∼15m leading up to ETM2. Red and brown paleosols, attributed to generally dry conditions, dominate the entire section below the onset of ETM2 and confirm drier conditions. In contrast, thick purple paleosols are associated with ETM2 at the Deer Creek site and suggest wetter conditions during most of the ETM2 interval. The prominent yellow sandstone at the top of the Gilmore Hill core was probably deposited during those wetter climate conditions.

The core displays distinct changes in stratigraphic architecture: the bottom ∼100m is mudrock-dominated and the top ∼100m is sandstone dominated. Several PETM studies have suggested that sediment coarsening in continental basins in the US and Spain developed in response to precipitation changes associated with global warming. Analysis of the Gilmore Hill core’s stratigraphic architecture in conjunction with carbon isotope and precipitation data shows that the prominent sandstone in the position of ETM2 was not caused by climate change. The sandstone is the uppermost part of the sandstone-rich interval whose base underlies ETM2 by more than 50m. This study shows that the shift from mudrock- to sandstone-dominated stratigraphy at Gilmore Hill, and possibly throughout the McCullough Peaks area, was not caused by climactic change associated with ETM2. While studies of PETM sections have suggested that the hyperthermal caused sediment coarsening in several different basins including the Bighorn Basin (e.g., Schmitz and Pujalte, 2007; Smith et al., 2008b; Foreman et al., 2012), this study suggests that the lesser magnitude ETM2 did not cross the necessary threshold to provoke a sedimentological response in the Bighorn Basin.

Categories
movie

Byzantium

“It is still a fact that the day you are born is the day you are most likely to be murdered.“

There is a lot from Byzantium that sticks out in my mind, but that line is perhaps the strongest. I’m not even certain why, but it feels right when you roll it up with the rest of the bloody meat that makes up that movie. Yeah, write this on the calendar. I found a vampire movie I liked.

Visually, it’s a beautiful movie. It goes from period piece to modern day, and both have their beautiful and disturbingly gritty sides. It’s really two stories running in parallel and explaining each other. In one story, we find out how Eleanor, and before her Clara (her mother) became vampires. This in turn explains what they’re running from in modern times, and their fucked-up family dynamic. And on top of that is Eleanor’s story of breaking free from her mother, reconciling her desire to the tell the truth with the necessity of lying, and falling in love.

Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan were both excellent as Clara and Eleanor respectively. I was already impressed by Ronan in Hanna. Honestly, I felt the only shortcoming of the entire movie was Caleb Landry Jones as Frank, Eleanor’s love interest. It doesn’t feel like there’s anything to that character, let alone any chemistry between him and Eleanor. I also honestly had a hard time understand Jones when he spoke sometimes… and I was just never able to grasp Frank as a character. He just didn’t seem consistent in how he acted from scene to scene, sometimes too young and sometimes much too old and… bleh.

But I really liked all the bits that didn’t involve Frank. It was excellent. And now I’m going to get a bit more in to why I’m still thinking about this movie, so you can consider it spoilery. But the following ramble is exactly why I think this was a good movie. I love it when movies keep me thinking and interested. (As opposed to keep me thinking about how much they pissed me off hello Oblivion.)

SPOILERS

Continue reading “Byzantium”
Categories
movie

2 Guns

I didn’t go into this movie with high expectations. I mean, just look at it:

Guns and shooting and guns and explosions and Bill Paxton being hilariously evil and southern. And let me be honest: this is one of those rare movies where what you see in the trailer is exactly what you get. There are guns and shooting and explosions and a bit more brutality than is perhaps necessary and oh lord the banter. It’s basically a buddy cop odd couple movie with a bit of a twist, since the two buddies start off by betraying each other right before they get betrayed by everyone else and driven back together. That’s the entire motive behind the story. There’s not a back story for either character you ever learn, and you don’t need to; they live in the now, dealing with the current crisis and exchanging quips between bullets.

And yet, I fucking loved this movie. I think I might have laughed for this more than I did at This Is the End. Because ultimately, it’s not about the little twist on a fairly standard plot. It’s all about Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg snarking at each other like a married couple. Those two actors (with a side of Bill Paxton) carry the entire movie and make it fun, because they seem to be having a damn good time with every moment they’re onscreen. It’s fast paced, plot twists exist just to give the apparently indestructible Wahlberg and Washington another chance to hilariously bicker, and the soundtrack is excellent.

2 Guns is ultimately two grown men snarking, blowing things up, and then exchanging more witty banter. It’s exactly as advertised on the packaging, no surprises. If you like that kind of thing (and I sure do) it’s more than worth the price of admission.

Categories
movie

Europa Report

This is an independent science fiction movie. It was released a week ago, but the release is so limited it’s not in any theaters near me. Thankfully, it’s also available from On Demand for $8, which made it cheaper than actually seeing it in a theater. I was excited about this movie. It didn’t disappoint.

To be honest, watching it on the home screen I think might have worked better than at the theater, just because of the film style (found footage, so generally not high quality) and the CGI wasn’t the greatest; what flaws I was able to see on a 55″ flatscreen would have no doubt been all the more glaring on a movie screen.

This is definitely one of the most scientifically accurate movies I’ve seen in a long time. (Per Phil Plait, JPL scientists were consultants on the film, and it looks like the filmmakers really took what they said to heart.) And the science really plays into the story and helps drive and define the plot. It’s the motivation and not the villain, which was very refreshing. It also serves as a good reminder that accurate, basically present-day science still has some amazing storytelling possibilities for speculative fiction in it.

At its heart, I think the movie is very much about science, and the wonder scientists feel, and the sacrifices they are willing to make for the sake of answering one of the greatest questions to ever face our species: are we alone? The cast really sold it, I think, and Daniel Wu and Anamaria Marinca were particularly good I think.

And there’s an adorable reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey at the beginning, which I loved.

The movie is mostly found footage style, which is a format I’m increasingly disenchanted with, though I understand why it’s used–it’s generally a cheaper option. For the most part I felt like it worked pretty well, and it put us in the action with the crew. I didn’t like how some of the jumps and cuts were done, since it really didn’t fit with the narrative frame of “here we edited this together for you.” It felt like a transparent attempt to make the movie seem scarier than it was or needed to be.

This was not a scary movie, despite what the trailer wants you to think:

If you believe the trailer, this is going to be a “found footage thing where team of astronauts goes to alien world and gets horrifically eaten by sneaky, evil aliens that may or may not look like giant space spiders.” And it’s really not. It’s tense, it’s heart-wrenching at times, but this is definitely not a horror movie.

SPOILERS

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