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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: So Many Prisoners of Zenda

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: So Many Prisoners of Zenda

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The Prisoner of Zenda (USA, 1922)

Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins (1863-1933) wrote some thirty-two books, mostly novels, many of them bestsellers that were adapted to stage and screen. Today he is remembered only for his swashbuckler The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) and its sequel, Rupert of Hentzau (1898). Both were set in the fictional principality of Ruritania, and were so popular that they spawned a host of imitators known as “Ruritanian romances.”

A littéraire at Oxford, Hawkins took a first in Classics at Balliol College, then a law degree. He settled into work as a barrister in the City in London, but the time weighed heavily on his hands, so he turned to writing. His first literary success, The Dolly Dialogues (1894), established the pattern for most of his novels, wry commentaries on London society mixing romance with politics. His second success was The Prisoner of Zenda, a rollicking adventure in a very different mode. Tastes have changed, and nowadays Hope’s Edwardian comedies of manners are largely forgotten, but The Prisoner of Zenda, with its iconic dash, flair, excitement, and humor, lives on.

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More Tales From The Magician’s Skull Live on Kickstarter!

More Tales From The Magician’s Skull Live on Kickstarter!

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“More Tales From The Magician’s Skull Kickstarter” Is Live

Now through Nov 19th, 2021, you can amplify the success of the Tales from the Magician’s Skull (TftMS) magazine by participating in the Kickstarter campaign brought to you by Goodman Games. The campaign is on fire in its early days and rapidly earned a “Projects We Love” badge from Kickstarter.

The initial 2017 Kickstarter (Black Gate release link) kicked off the first two issues, and a follow-up campaign in 2019 carried us to issue #6. Throughout this journey, Black Gate has chronicled reviews for most issues: TftMS#3, TftMS#4, TftMS#5, TftMS#6. A key post is John O’Neill’s epic interview with Joseph Goodman (publisher) and Howard Andrew Jones (chief editor). This interview captures the origins of the Skull from its two primary champions (who appear possessed by the undead celebrity).

Current readers already know that the magazine magically blends (a) homages to pulp magazines with superior paper quality & inked illustrations with (b) contemporary masters in storytelling. The result? We get officially licensed pastiche of Leiber’s Fafrhd and the Gray Mouser/Lankhmar (Nathan Long’s contribution to #6) and Elak of Atlantis tales from Adrian Cole (issues #4 and #5); and we get fresh perspectives on Sword & Sorcery from John C. Hocking, Clint Werner, Violette Malan, James Enge, and others. And there is more! RPG players rejoice since each issue provides stats for playing with the characters, items, and spells featured in each story.

Read On! The Secrets to Pledging Are Revealed

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Always Then and Never Now: The 13 Clocks by James Thurber

Always Then and Never Now: The 13 Clocks by James Thurber

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ONCE upon a time, in a gloomy castle on a lonely hill, where there were thirteen clocks that wouldn’t go, there lived a cold, aggressive Duke, and his niece, the Princess Saralinda. She was warm in every wind and weather, but he was always cold. His hands were as cold as his smile and almost as cold as his heart. He wore gloves when he was asleep, and he wore gloves when he was awake, which made it difficult for him to pick up pins or coins or the kernels of nuts, or to tear the wings from nightingales. He was six feet four, and forty-six, and even colder than he thought he was. One eye wore a velvet patch; the other glittered through a monocle, which made half his body seem closer to you than the other half. He had lost one eye when he was twelve, for he was fond of peering into nests and lairs in search of birds and animals to maul. One afternoon, a mother shrike had mauled him first. His nights were spent in evil dreams, and his days were given to wicked schemes.

Wickedly scheming, he would limp and cackle through the cold corridors of the castle, planning new impossible feats for the suitors of Saralinda to perform. He did not wish to give her hand in marriage, since her hand was the only warm hand in the castle. Even the hands of his watch and the hands of all the thirteen clocks were frozen. They had all frozen at the same time, on a snowy night, seven years before, and after that it was always ten minutes to five in the castle. Travelers and mariners would look up at the gloomy castle on the lonely hill and say, “Time lies frozen there. It’s always Then. It’s never Now.”

So begins James Thurber’s wonderful fairytale The 13 Clocks. Best known as a cartoonist, humorist, and one of the stalwarts of the New Yorker during the Harold Ross and William Shawn years, he also wrote several fairytales for children. I haven’t read the others — Many Moon and The White Deer — but I have come back to this one several times. An effervescent read, it never fails to delight.

As described in that magnificently menacing opening, the evil Duke spends his days setting his niece’s suitors impossible tasks such as cutting a slice of the moon or turning the ocean to wine. Sometimes, for no better reason than failing to describe his different-length legs properly (they differed in length because he spent his youth “place-kicking puppies and punting kittens”) or not praising his wine, staring at his niece too long, or having a name that started with X, he would just kill them.

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Not Streaming: Wonderfalls

Not Streaming: Wonderfalls

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Wonderfalls
Wonderfalls

This is the second article in an occasional series called either Now Streaming or Not Streaming, depending on the availability of the television shows or films I’ll be discussing.  In addition to discussing the works, I’ll also note the availability of the works.  The series also ties into an issue of the Hugo Award winning fanzine Journey Planet I’ve recently published which has appreciations of more than thirty television series that were cancelled within two seasons.

Sometimes a show’s cancellation is, at least in part, the result of the coincidental similarity with another show. On September 18, 2006, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, an hour long drama built around the production of a weekly comedy sketch show, debuted on NBC.  Three weeks later, on October 11, NBC debuted 30 Rock, an half-hour long comedy built around the production of a weekly comedy sketch show.  While 30 Rock ran for seven seasons and 138 episodes, Studio 60 only lasted a single series and 22 episodes.

A couple years earlier, a similar situation happened when Joan of Arcadia debuted on CBS on September 26, 2003. It ran for two seasons and told the story of a woman who was given tasks to perform by God. Six months later, on March 12, 2004, Fox aired the first episode of Wonderfalls, a story about a woman who hears voices giving her tasks to perform. After airing the first four episodes out of order, Fox cancelled the show. Fortunately, one of the executive producers, Tim Minear, had experience with Fox (he had worked on Firefly), and they had plotted the series to complete a story arc within the 13 episodes initially ordered. The full run aired on Canada’s Vision TV six months after it was cancelled in the United States, where viewers had to wait until the DVD set was released in early 2005 with all the ‘sodes in the correct order.

So, what is Wonderfalls and why is it so Wonderful? …

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19 Movies: If It’s the 1950’s, It Must Be Radioactive

19 Movies: If It’s the 1950’s, It Must Be Radioactive

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This time around we’re focusing on films containing the most common theme in 1950’s sf films: radiation. This installment contains just a sample of films exploring that theme, so we’ll certainly revisit it at some future time.

Kiss Me Deadly [1955: 9]

Often cited as one of the great noir films, this strange blend of hard-boiled detection and sf chronicles Spillane’s Mike Hammer seeking the “whatsis.” Right from the backward scrolling opening credits you know you’re in for an unusual and unsettling ride as quirky characters move through quirky Los Angeles settings that no longer exist.

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Goth Chick News: What’s the Scariest Movie of All Time?

Goth Chick News: What’s the Scariest Movie of All Time?

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As the date around which the entire Goth Chick News calendar revolves, draws ever nearer, the horror movie marathon in our subterranean office continues. Of course, there is much debate on the topic of “scariest.” Is it classic vs. newer releases, or blood-baths vs. atmospheric? Is it high tech and CGI or micro-budget? I decided to do a little research among the dozens of “best of” lists to settle some of the debates, when amazingly enough I found a scientific study on just this topic.

UK-based broadband comparison site, Broadband Choices has tackled the question for the second year with their Science of Scare research project. The goal? To scientifically discover the scariest horror movie of all time. Broadband Choices invites 250 study subjects to watch 40 horror movies considered the “scariest” based on Reddit recommendations and critics’ “best of” lists. This years’ offering included the top 30 films as ranked in the 2020 Science of Scare experiment, plus and additional 10 new entries.

Study subjects are fitted with heart rate monitors and seated in screening rooms to watch all the movies over the course of several weeks. Researchers (and medical personnel) observe the subjects and measure the average impact the shortlisted movies had on the heart rate (measured in BPM) of the subjects, compared to the average resting BPM of 64.

So, what movie collectively raised the heart rates of this year’s study subjects most?

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Fantasia 2021, Part LI: When I Consume You

Fantasia 2021, Part LI: When I Consume You

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“Bed” is a 10-minute short film from Emily Bennett about a woman facing her fears. Our protagonist, Madeline, is alone in her apartment and we learn that she’s been hiding out there for some time. There’s something in her bedroom that scares her, something to do with her bed. We see that fear coming to a final confrontation, and a hint of what comes after. It’s an effective piece that tells a story tautly and well, and makes a single location visually interesting as it extracts different emotional tones out of the one place.

With it was bundled When I Consume You, a feature film written and directed by Perry Blackshear. In 2015 I reviewed and quite liked his first movie, They Look Like People, a humanistic and atmospheric story with elements of horror, about the emotional bonds between two people and how they’re tested. Which description fits When I Consume You as well.

It’s the story of Wilson Shaw and his sister Daphne, two people from a poor background struggling to get by in New York City; Wilson (Evan Dumouchel, who was also in They Look Like People) is a gentle man who’s had little luck in the job market, while Daphne (Libby Ewing) is an aggressive woman with a history of addiction who’s fiercely protective of her older brother. But someone or something from her dark past is after her. When it catches up with her it at least appears to be supernatural. Can Wilson toughen up enough to defeat a force Daphne cannot? Or is there a trick hidden in that question?

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Fantasia 2021, Part XLII: Circo Animato 2021

Fantasia 2021, Part XLII: Circo Animato 2021

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Each year Fantasia dedicates one of its short film showcases to animation. The 2021 edition was playing on-demand throughout the festival, and when a hole in my schedule opened up, I was happy to plug it with this year’s Circo Animato, a selection of 13 films from 7 countries.

“Ouroboros,” from France, led off. Written and directed by Chloé Forestier, it’s a lushly-coloured three-minute piece. Like many of these shorts, it’s 2D animation with no dialogue. On a pleasant afternoon, a depressing purple goop or shade begins to swallow up a town. But, as we see, sometimes when faced with a despairing situation simple action can be a start. It’s a nice parable about breaking out of old habits; you can watch it here.

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Knight at the Movies: SIEGE (1983), or SELF DEFENSE or possibly NIGHT WARRIORS

Knight at the Movies: SIEGE (1983), or SELF DEFENSE or possibly NIGHT WARRIORS

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You ever watch one of the long video game cutscenes that passes for movies these days and think “I kinda miss old, raw-looking films, like early Romero and Carpenter. Something that had teeth. Heart. Balls. They don’t make ’em like that anymore.”

Whether they do or don’t make them like that anymore is another blog post, but a good way to go back and get that early Romero vibe is to seek out overlooked titles from the era. One of those is the Canuxploitation shocker Siege (1983) (released in the USA as Self Defense and sometimes Night Warriors). Thanks to Severin Films, this lost thriller is now available to today’s Blu-ray audience and streaming through sites like Amazon.

Now I’ve seen this movie labeled online as pastiche/homage/ripoff of John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13. YMMV, but to me this is the work of a couple of filmmakers (Paul Donovan and Maura O’Connell of DEFCON-4 fame, most memorable for its excellent poster) who love Assault and want to make something like it, but improve on its weaknesses. They gave the attackers faces, names, and characters, cutting down the numbers to a handful, and made the defenders more vulnerable by putting them in two-story apartment quad, rather than a fortress-like police station. But I get ahead of myself.

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Food Of My People

Food Of My People

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Food, culture, and magic are deeply interlinked: geography and climate and trade routes determine ingredients, traditions transmit recipes, recipes are linked to folk beliefs, and ultimately the things we consume shape us. We are what we eat, and what we believe about the things we eat says something about us. Eating is a necessary act, and so there’s magic in it, varying with culture and ingredients.

Thus Food Of My People, a new anthology from Exile Editions co-edited by Candas Jane Dorsey and Ursula Pflug. Twenty-one stories, plus a twenty-second in Dorsey’s introduction, tell tales of food and the fantastic. There are tales reflecting a range of cultural traditions, though with a geographical focus on Canada (both editors and the publisher are Canadian). And each story is followed with a recipe, sometimes a practical usable one, sometimes a fantastical extension of the fiction.

Most of the stories are set in this world and this time, though a few take place in the future and a couple in fantastic secondary worlds. In Pflug’s Afterword, she points out that several of the stories can be described as New Weird, and if there is an overall genre tone to the book that’s probably it. The physicality of the subgenre aside, there’s something deeply weird about the process of eating, something about transformation at a deep level: ingredients into food, food into energy and shit, the whole process implausibly warding off hunger pains and sustaining life.

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