SF Diplomat

REVIEW - The Orphanage (2007)

My review of Juan Antonia Bayona's The Orphanage (El Orfanato) has gone live over at Strange Horizons.  Well... I say "my" review but you'll note that I share a by-line with Niall Harrison.

The reason for this is that I wrote up my review and, moments before dispatching it,
I was struck by the urge to write it up as a psychiatric case study.  Case studies turn out to be one of our Niall's professional areas of expertise and after a couple of back-and-forths, Niall had transformed my crude attempt at pastiche into something altogether more impressive.  So it was clear that Niall should share the creative credits.

Were this a book review, doubtless Jeff Vandermeer would now be coming up with a manner of hunting Niall for sport over the internet :-) (pardon the cache-link but David Moles' site is currently down).

REVIEW - Iron Man (2008)

My review of Jon Favreau's Iron Man has gone live over at THE ZONE.

Elephant-memoried readers may well remember that I had a few things to say about the film and the character of Iron Man when the first trailers appeared (a few things that I felt needed *ahem* repeating).  Intriguingly, the film didn't answer the question I thought was going to prove tricky, preferring instead to leave it to the sequel.

Not the best of films, I think it will mostly be remembered as the first Hollywood adaptation of Geek media that did not feel the need to be "dark and gritty", a trend that is set to continue with the adaptation of Speed Racer, which looks like a cross between Wipe Out and Soundgarden's video for Black Hole Sun (a song I hated at the time and which, I am pleased to say, has not grown on me with age).

REVIEW - Rescue Dawn (2006)

My final Videovista review this month is Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn.

This was a bit of a disappointment I must admit.  Someone recently pointed out to me that my film reviews tend to naturally gravitate towards films that are about "loneliness, despair and death", which is probably true.  This also explains why I'm such a fan of Herzog's film making, in fact, his documentary Grizzly Man is probably one of my favourite documentaries (along with the works of Adam Curtis).

REVIEW - The Backwoods (2006)

This month I have also reviewed Koldo Serra's The Backwoods for Videovista.

Going by the IMDb page and a few of the other reviews I've had a look at online, I get the impression that this film has done the film festival circuit and got a real kicking for its troubles, though I can't quite understand why.  Though perhaps the reason for that kicking disappeared along with the 60 minutes or so that differentiates the DVD version from the version that got released in Argentina.

REVIEW - The DL Chronicles (2005)

My review of The DL Chronicles has gone live over at Videovista.

I was hoping for a slightly different take on many of the 'genre conventions' of gay cinema or at least an interesting look at a lifestyle that you don't hear that much about in the UK, but instead I got a rather disappointing series of rather unfocused TV episodes.

I've reviewed some other works of gay cinema :

• Eating Out (2004)
• Garcon Stupide (2004)

Looking back over those reviews, I bemoan the 'marks out of ten' rating system as aside from the stupid haircuts and the silly phone sex scene I can't remember anything about Eating Out but I can remember the substantially more ambitious and intelligent Garcon Stupide in some detail.

Though one thing that does weird me out is the fact that many gay films feel the need to feature quite steamy sex scenes.  I'm not sure if this is supposed to keep the straights out or try and get the gays in or just an opportunity to put something on film that might have had them chemically castrated by past generations but I noted such things were entirely absent from Celine Sciamma's fantastic Water Lillies (Naissance des Pieuvres) whose sex scenes are firmly grounded in awkward, fumbling reality.

An Appearance in SF Signal's Mind Meld

John from SF Signal was nice enough to invite me to comment in this week's Mind Meld :

Which SF/F Books Have The Best and Worst Endings?

My favourite ending is that of one of my favourite books, J.G. Ballard's Cocaine Nights, it's an ending that is thematically quite complex and even sitting down to write up why I liked it made me consider it in a new light.

My least favourite ending was that of Orson Scott Card's Xenocide as it's arguably one of the worst examples of a deus ex machina ending.  Speaking of which, I was hugely gratified by how many people chose the end of Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy, a 3000 page trilogy that ends with a literal deus ex machina.

It was also nice to interact with SF Signal in a way that didn't involve me going "Oh my God!  How right wing is X?" in the comments box.  So thanks for having me guys.

The Arthur C. Clarke Award - A Thank You.

  Unsurprisingly, the news got onto the internet faster than I got home but Richard Morgan's Black Man did indeed win the 2008 Arthur C. Clarke award.

  Now, you may think that I am going back on my promise to stop blogging by posting this news, but I consider this an exception that makes the rule as I am not so much blogging the news as simply saying Thank You to Tom Hunter, the award's administrator for inviting me.  It was an unexpected invitation and a real honor to attend the presentation.

It was also great to hook up with the few SF folks that I've met before and add a few more faces to names and websites.

So thank you all :-)

Blasphemous Geometry is upon us!

My First Blasphemous Geometry column has gone live over at Futurismic.

It is devoted to the future of book recommendations and I had a lot of fun writing it.  It's all very well writing quite precise and analytical criticism but then you don't yet to accuse Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake of having a "cavernous lady-bucket".

There might well be another one next month if I don't cause all of their subscribers to run away screaming.

 

Iain M. Banks' Matter - A Roundtable Discussion

As long in its gestation period as an African elephant...

As slow as molasses and only half as thick...

The discussion of Iain M. Banks' Matter involving my good self as well as Niall Harrison, Paul Raven and James Bloomer has started to appear.  The others are all going to be publishing different bits of the discussion throughout the week.

• Part One (at Big Dumb Object)
• Part Two (at Torque Control)
• Part Three (at Velcro City Tourist Board)

REVIEW - Brasyl by Ian McDonald (2007)

My review of Ian McDonald's Brasyl has gone live at The ZONE.

It took me a couple of runs at it but once I got into it I was simply blown away.  Ian McDonald seems able to systematically up his game.  Which is pretty bloody impressive given the sheer quality of River of Gods.

REVIEW - The Silence (1963)

April's Videovista also has a review I wrote of Ingmar Bergman's The Silence (also known as Trystnaden) as it's being re-released on DVD along with Through a Glass Darkly and Winter Light.

I was quite surprised at how well my review of the film turned out as  I had to take three runs at watching it.  The reason why I had to keep returning to it is because it kept causing me to fall asleep due to the fact that the entire film contains no more than 40 lines of dialogue.

However, it was also the film that converted me to Bergman who I have reviewed (somewhat less charitably) before :

• Prison
• After the Rehearsal

As you can see from the length of the piece I wrote about The Silence, it had quite an effect upon me.  It also made me think a bit about the nature of reviewing and, perhaps, why it is that The Clute so likes the works of Gene Wolfe and why Paul Kincaid also felt the urge to fill his new book What it is We Do When We Read Science Fiction with no less than four essays about the exact same author.

REVIEW - Rendition (2007)

April's Videovista also has my review of Gavin Hood's rather disappointing Rendition.

Speaking of American Politics, I've recently been enjoying Bill Moyers' Journal, which can be subscribed to as a podcast.  A lot of bad things are said about Amercian Journalism but Moyers' coverage easily out-stretches anything I've encountered before in terms of depth of analysis and insight.  I actually think it's better at covering American politics than anything on British TV is at covering British politics.

REVIEW - Uwasa No Onna (1954) and Chikamatsu Monogatari (1954)

This month's Videovista has just put up my twin reviews of Uwasa No Onna (The Crucified Woman) and Chikamatsu Monogatari (The Crucified Lovers) both directed by the great Japanese director Mizoguchi Kenji, who has a nice piece about him in this month's issue of Sight & Sound.

I'm quite a big fan of this period in Japanese cinema partly because it is so radically different to the neon Manga-ised image of the place that filters through to us in western media and genre art.

There's a lovely stillness and thoughtfulness to Japanese cinema of this period.  The relative drabness of the setting along with the reserved, controlled demeanor of many of the actors only serves to emphasise the boiling emotions their charaters are going through.

For further cool post-War Japanese cinema, consider my reviews of some of the films of Yasujiro Ozu :

• Tokyo Twilight
• An Autumn Afternoon
• Good Morning!
• Equinox Flower

REVIEW - I Am Legend (2007)

My review of the Will Smith version of I Am Legend has just gone up HERE.

Unfortunately you need to be a member of the British Science Fiction Association in order to read it properly, you'll also need to be registered with their new forums, which I have already been causing trouble on.  Oh dear.

The review is appearing in issue 187 of Matrix, which is the first online issue of a magazine that, up until recently, was published in dead tree form and mailed to BSFA members.

Since I wrote the review, the film's original ending has surfaced online.  I won't link to it as they're being shut down almost as fast as they can pop up, but I feel rather vindicated in that the original ending not only draws on the themes I identified in my review, but it also completely fails to mention God, thereby adding weight to my uncharitable speculation that the film-makers chickened out and drafted in Jee-sus in order to sell the film better in the Bible Belt.

REVIEW - Benny's Video (1992)

Tony Lee's The ZONE has just put up my review of Michael Haneke's Benny's Video.

It's part of what has been called his Emotional Glaciation trilogy along with The Seventh Continent and 71 Fragments From a Chronology of Chance, which I reviewed for Videovista a while back.

REVIEW - Weaver by Stephen Baxter (2008)

My Strange Horizons review of Stephen Baxter's Weaver has now gone live.

I have now reviewed the whole of the Time's Tapestry series :

• Emperor (July 2006)
• Conqueror (February 2007)
• Navigator (November 2007)

When Libertarians send for their Lawyers...

I'm resurrecting this blog for a one-off post about something that has been troubling me quite deeply as of late.

Earlier this week the UK Political blogger and activist Tim Ireland  (of Bloggerheads fame) repeated the claim that so-called Libertarian Paul Staines (aka 'Guido Fawkes') had been leaching images that belonged to other people.  Not the most scandalous of claims (this place did it all the time) but Staines nonetheless responded by sicking a lawyer-chum on Ireland.

The lawyer in question is Donal Blaney, who, much like Staines himself, has a history of links to the Conservative party.  He is most famous for being investigated for racism while a Local Councillor and for  attempting to launch a  witch-hunt into so-called left wing bias in British academia (a move no doubt inspired by Allan Bloom's neo-conservative attack on decadent intellectuals in his book The Closing of the American Mind.

You will note the irony of right wing people who bemoan the depredations of the nanny state while simultaneously leaping to litigation to silence their detractors.

Not a Gamer Anymore

The Escapist has just published my first piece for them about the experience of realising that you are no longer a gamer and the factors that contributed to this realisation.

Strange Horizons' 2007 in Review

I have contributed a short piece to Strange Horizons' round-up of 2007.

End of the Line

Inspired by M. John Harrison's decision to wind down his blog, I've decided to do the same.

Originally this blog was intended as a place for me to keep track of the various reviews I produced but since then it's kind of changed into the place I publish my reviews and a platform for my views on various matters.  I have looked back over the past year and I realised that the last book I unreservedly enjoyed and reviewed was back in March.  I've also noticed that I've been reviewing less and less and complaining more and more vociferously and generally working myself into an increasingly unhappy, obsessive and exasperated rut wherein nothing is ever good enough, especially not myself.

From this point on, my criticism will be produced only for other venues and my ideas will be kept to myself and occasionally inflicted upon my friends.

Thank you all for reading :-)