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Goth Chick News: Now Here’s One We Can Probably All Live With…

Goth Chick News: Now Here’s One We Can Probably All Live With…

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image0101On Sunday I had the unpleasant task of informing you that remaking the Terry Gilliam classic Time Bandits was actually being contemplated somewhere in the universe.

This sent all of you scrambling for the map and the location of the closest hole in the universe whereby you could pop in on these Hollywood geniuses at the moment when they made their career choices, and steer them neatly toward dentistry.

On the other hand, merely delivering this news sent me straight into the deepest depths of the underground offices of Black Gate to curl up in a fetal position and weep about the state of the entertainment industry.

However, light does eventually shine, even if it’s in the form of an intern with a flashlight in one hand, and a freshly made quad-latte in the other.

He also had some very interesting pictures hot off the wire.

On occasion we’ve all agreed that there are some movies, much like some people you know, that could do with a make over. Perhaps the original script was sound but the acting was painful; or the acting and the script were OK but wow, wouldn’t it be great to see those early-attempts at special effects updated with some new computer-generated magic? True that the list of these movies is short, but we can all think of a very select few.

Remember Fright Night?

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Knight at the Movies: Pontypool

Knight at the Movies: Pontypool

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pontypoolZombies, zombies everywhere
But not a trope worth a think. . .

I’ll cop to languishing under a surfeit of zombies.

Zombie filmakers suffer under the same burden a Shakespearean director does. You want to do a new production of Richard III, but how do you make your mark on four hundred years of canon?

As I see it, you have three choices. You try and set a new gold-standard in casting, costumes, set, stage direction and so on. A fine way to go about it, if you have the money. Your second option is to do an adequate job with the above, but add a gimmick, like the 1930’s fascist take on the play by Ian McKellen. The third option is to toss Shakespeare out the window, or at least make drastic changes to the material — ferinstance, enhance the many curses the characters throw at each other until the effect’s more fantasy than history.

A would-be zombie moviemaker is in the same besieged mall as our Shakespearean. Everyone labors in the justifiably popular shadow of George Romero, who took zombies out of the D-list Universal monster era, added a ghoulish twist, and sprinkled on some Rousseau. Romero’s zombie mythos is the new canon.

Zack Snyder set the new gold standard with his remake of Dawn of the Dead. The genre-tripping triad of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost created one of the best entries in zombie film-making by simply giving it all a Brit twist with Shaun of the Dead.

Then there’s 2008’s Pontypool, which tosses Romero out the window in a number of ways. I’d never heard of it until I happened to catch it on late-night cable, but then I’ve been living in a child-care submarine for the past couple of years, so it was a thrilling surprise.

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Art of the Genre: Star Frontiers

Art of the Genre: Star Frontiers

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Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn Cover Copyright WotC
Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn Cover Copyright WotC

It’s summer intern time here at Black Gate L.A., John having flown in Sue ‘Goth Chick’ Granquist to help break them in. She’s not in love with the beach and the sun, but I must say seeing her in a black one-piece, Jackie-O glasses, and a hat right out of Vampire Hunter D, I had to take a shot with my iPhone because Ryan Harvey [who was struggling with a deadline instead of taking in some sun] would have never believed it otherwise.

That picture, snapped at a moment’s notice, got me thinking about technology and the crazy almost science fiction world we live in. When I was in junior high, way back in the early 80s, my love affair with D&D was in full bloom, and TSR was expanding its brand with new genres like the 1920s prohibition classic Gangbusters, the Bond-like Top Secret, and my personal favorite the space opera Star Frontiers.

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Andrew Zimmerman Jones Reviews Shard RPG

Andrew Zimmerman Jones Reviews Shard RPG

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shardI first discovered the Shard RPG at GenCon in 2009. Despite being one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever seen, I was instantly enthralled by the premise. If the review below wets your appetite, then you can get more information (including a free Welcome Booklet download) from the Shard RPG website.

Shard RPG Basic Compendium

Aaron de Orive and Scott Jones
Shard Studios (352 pages, $39.99, August 2009)
Reviewed by Andrew Zimmerman Jones

One of the pleasures of going to GenCon is to stumble upon some of the small press games, which are like little treasures sprinkled throughout the dealer’s room. The last time I went, one such treasure was Shard, a game with a spark of originality that is rarely found even in the gaming industry.

Don’t get me wrong, I love traditional fantasy settings and even love the permutations where tradition is turned on its ear, such as the way mythical creatures are portrayed in White Wolf’s World of Darkness line.

But still, there’s something to be said for a game that doesn’t rely on mages, elves, vampires, werewolves, and so on as the basis of their originality.

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I Still Don’t Understand the Amulet, But I Love The Secret of NIMH

I Still Don’t Understand the Amulet, But I Love The Secret of NIMH

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secret-of-nimh-theatrical-posterThe Secret of NIMH (1982)
Directed by Don Bluth. Featuring the Voices of Elizabeth Hartman, Peter Strauss, Dom DeLuise, Derek Jacobi, Hermione Baddeley, David Carradine, Arthur Malet, Paul Shenar, Wil Wheaton, Shannon Doherty.

Hello, my name is Ryan Harvey, and apparently all I do here at Black Gate is review animated fantasy films.

With 1982’s The Secret of NIMH now out on a fresh new Blu-ray Disc. . . .

Wait a minute. Seriously, MGM Home Video? (Or Fox, or whoever actually handled this disc.) This is the best you can do with your new release of The Secret of NIMH onto hi-def? Normally, I would wait until the end of a movie review to discuss the quality of a DVD/BD, but you require me upfront to take you behind the shed with a very large paddle. This is shameful. The Secret of NIMH is an acknowledged animated masterpiece, the film responsible for starting the uphill climb from years of “limited animation” doldrums toward the new flowering of the 1990s. This movie taught a generation of viewers what was possible in the medium. It has fans of freakish dedication, such as myself, a scads of websites dedicated to its deconstruction and analysis. And all you can do is slap down whatever print you had on hand and stick on 1080 lines of resolution?

No, no, this is unacceptable. Disney pours immense work into restoring their classics for Blu-ray release, using the best prints possible and cleaning them up so the films look as fresh as they did on the animators’ table. But your current version of The Secret of NIMH looks far worse than it did on theater screens in 1982. I should know, since I was there as a wide-eyed youngling, and recall how the movie blew apart my nine-year-old mind with its motion, depth of imagery, beautiful backgrounds, and bizarre fantasy effects animation. And yet you give us a Blu-ray slathered in scratches and noise with dulled colors and a washed-out palette. This is hardly a step up from the 2007 DVD release. You couldn’t even bother with an interesting popup menu font! Are you aware that this is a classic?

Ah, clearly not.

I think I have that out of my system. Breathe. Breathe. Okay, now I think I can talk about one of the greatest fantasy experiences ever put on animation cels.

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Lord Dunsany and “The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save For Sacnoth”

Lord Dunsany and “The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save For Sacnoth”

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Lord DunsanyLord Dunsany’s short story “The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth” has been called the first sword-and-sorcery story ever written. That attribution has been contested elsewhere, though. I don’t particularly intend to grapple with the question — it seems to me that genres are defined by conventions, which is to say by expectations held by a reader; whether a story fits a genre therefore depends on whether the conventions it uses are the ones that the individual reader expects, and while many stories use conventions in such standard ways that there’s broad agreement about sort of tale they are, some, like ‘Sacnoth,’ will vary in definition from person to person. But as a story, I think “Sacnoth” is worth discussing. Like most of Dunsany’s early short stories, it’s really quite brilliant.

(You can find it online here, and if you’ve not read it before I strongly urge you to give it a try.)

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Goth Chick Crypt Notes: Like Remaking Gone With the Wind

Goth Chick Crypt Notes: Like Remaking Gone With the Wind

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image001It’s difficult to believe that I’m about to type this, but here goes.

Someone is trying to remake the 1981 masterpiece, Time Bandits.

There are almost more things wrong with that statement than I can fit in one post. But I’ll run down the obvious ones, and you can debate the rest amongst yourselves.

I’m just too distraught.

First, I’m struggling with the concept of this classic being given what Hollywood is euphemistically terming a “reboot.” Let’s be honest, Time Bandits is perfect precisely the way it is. It doesn’t need updating, CGI’ing, or God-forbid, 3D’ing.

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Apex Magazine 23 Released

Apex Magazine 23 Released

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apexmag04pubitThe April edition of Apex Magazine boasts what publisher Jason Sizemore terms “the first of our new expanded editions.”

Editor Catherynne M. Valente’s fiction selections include Eugie Foster’s “Biba Jibun” and Michael J. Deluca marks his first Apex debut with “The Eater.” The reprints are Mike Allen’s Nebula Award-nominated “The Button Bin”  and Jennifer Pelland’s Nebula Award-nominated story “Ghosts of New York” from Dark Faith, about which I said:

The opening story, “Ghosts of New York” by Jennifer Pelland, considers the afterlife of those who made the horrific choice to jump from the Twin Towers rather than remain in a burning buidling about to collapse. The whole subgenre of 9/11 fiction is tricky, given  our collective memory of something so frighteningly incomprehensible that’s been trivialized over time with the endlessly surreal replaying loop of the imploding skyscrapers, but Pelland’s take here is vividly disturbing in suggesting that memorializing the dead can make matters worse.

Also included are Rose Lemberg’s poem “Thirteen Principles of Faith”and the history of the Nebula Awards by Michael A. Burstein.

Apex Magazine 23 is sold online for $2.99; it’s also available in Kindle, Nook, and a downloadable format through Smashwords. Previous issues are available through their back issue page. We last profiled Apex with Issue 22.

You can subscribe and get 12 issues for just $19.99.

Ravenwood: The Forgotten Occult Detective

Ravenwood: The Forgotten Occult Detective

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ravenwood-fortier2ravenwood-davis1The phrase “pulp fiction” has been misused long before Quentin Tarantino appropriated it. For the past several decades nearly all genre fiction of the first half of the twentieth century has been considered pulp when in fact many of its bestselling authors (such as Edgar Rice Burroughs and Sax Rohmer) were published in the better-paying slicks and not the downscale pulps. The writing in the slicks tended to be more polished in sharp contrast to the breakneck pace of the pulps whose authors often hid behind house names and whose primary motivation was packing in as many thrills as possible in each story while still meeting their deadline.

Ravenwood is a typical pulp creation. Nowhere near as successful as Doc Savage or The Shadow, Ravenwood appeared as a support feature in five issues of Secret Agent “X” in 1936. The creation of prolific pulp writer Frederick C. Davis, the character did much to pave the way for the occult crimefighter The Green Lama and was a strong influence on Marvel Comics’ Dr. Strange.

Altus Press collected Davis’ five original pulp stories in a single volume, Ravenwood: The Complete Series published in 2008. More recently, the acclaimed contemporary pulp-specialty publisher Airship 27 revived the character for an anthology of new stories from their talented stable of modern pulp writers. Their Ravenwood, Stepson of Mystery was published in 2010.

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Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for Artist and Dark Beauty Editor Topher Adam

Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for Artist and Dark Beauty Editor Topher Adam

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darkbeautyYes, even Goth Chicks sleep with something under their pillows.

It started with a Deady Bear, then a vintage Rocky Horror Picture Show t-shirt and then a Living Dead Doll. But until now, it had never been a magazine.

About a month ago, I became acquainted with Dark Beauty and fell instantly in love. Not in a Johnny-Depp-as-Jack-Sparrow kind of way, but in a David-Bowie-in-jodhpurs-with-a-riding-crop-in-Labyrinth kind of way.

In other words, hopelessly.

A little digging led me to artist extraordinaire and Editor and Chief, Topher Adam who is well on his way to making my “Top 10 Most Interesting of the Underground” for 2011. Ever dreamed of seeing yourself as your favorite literary or movie character? Have a vision of yourself as Tolkien’s Elf King or as the Green Lantern? Topher is here to make your personal fantasy visions come true.

So pull up a leather chair and meet Mr Topher Adam.…

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