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Goth Chick News: Walker Stalker Con Drags into Chicago

Goth Chick News: Walker Stalker Con Drags into Chicago

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Walker-Stalker-Con-2014“It’s some kind of zombie convention, did you know about this?”

This is GCN photog Chris Zemko calling me last Friday night with a hot bit of industry news. Apparently a very significant event in the Chicago horror scene had eluded us (let me show you my shocked face) and Chris had just done a diving catch.

A little bit of digging turned up the information that yes indeed, Walker Stalker Con was taking place in Chicago, at one of the larger convention centers, that very weekend.

Walker Stalker Con is the brain child of podcasters James Frazier and Eric Nordhoff, who at one point apparently road tripped to Senoia, GA, where they were able to view the set of The Walking Dead and meet the actors from the show. As a result of this experience, they began The Walker Stalkers podcast to discuss the show twice weekly during its seasonal runs – and from that sprouted the inspiration for a convention.

Kicking off first in Atlanta last year, the convention focused on recreating James’s and Eric’s original experience with The Walking Dead’s cast and crew, along with actors and artists from other zombie shows, movies, and art. Due to the overwhelming response it received in 2013, James and Eric decided to host an additional annual event beginning in Chicago this year.

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Firefly, A Retrospective — Part 6

Firefly, A Retrospective — Part 6

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Firefly cast-smallHey there! I’m back this week with part 6 of my examination of the Firefly series. So far, we’ve covered the pilot in Part 1, episodes two and three (“Train Job” and “Bushwhacked”) in Part 2, “Shindig” and “Safe “ in Part 3, “Our Mrs. Reynolds” and “Jaynestown” in Part 4, and “Out of Gas” and “Ariel” in Part 5.

We’re into the second half of the season, where I really feel the show finds its stride.

First up, War Stories!

War Stories (Episode 10)

It starts with Simon and Shepherd Book (who was absent last episode during the hospital heist) discussing River’s condition. Simon thinks he’s closing in on what the Alliance did to her. River is struggling, though, because the treatments aren’t working all the time.

The crew is feeling good after their last job, though Wash gets irritated with Zoe for not backing his plan to cut out the middlemen when selling their loot. Instead, she takes the captain’s side in the discussion, and Wash feels Mal and Zoe are too close. Meanwhile, Inara’s attractive female client arrives on the ship. Jayne sees them and announces that he’ll be in his bunk. Classic Jayne!

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Tom Reamy, the Iron Throne, and George R.R. Martin’s Plan to Stay Ahead of HBO: The Game of Thrones Issue of Vanity Fair

Tom Reamy, the Iron Throne, and George R.R. Martin’s Plan to Stay Ahead of HBO: The Game of Thrones Issue of Vanity Fair

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Vanity Fair Game of Tthrones-smallYou know your HBO fantasy series has hit it big when it makes the cover of culture and fashion magazine Vanity Fair.

The April issue, on sale now, features a cast photoshoot by star photographer Annie Leibovitz and a feature on the making of the show written by Jim Windolf. But more interesting is a wide-ranging interview with author George R.R. Martin which covers, among other things, the true scale of the Iron Throne and Martin’s plan to stay ahead of the rapidly-progressing show.

The season that’s about to debut covers the second half of the third book… But there are two more books beyond that… A Dance with Dragons is itself a book that’s as big as A Storm of Swords. So there’s potentially three more seasons there, between [A Feast for Crows] and Dance, if they split into two the way they did [with Storms]. Now, Feast and Dance take place simultaneously… You can combine them and do it chronologically. And it’s my hope that they’ll do it that way and then, long before they catch up with me, I’ll have published The Winds of Winter, which’ll give me another couple years. It might be tight on the last book, A Dream of Spring, as they juggernaut forward.

I was also fascinated by his comments on the death of the brilliant Tom Reamy, whom we profiled in Black Gate 15:

Tom died of a heart attack just a few months after winning the award for best new writer in his field. He was found slumped over his typewriter, seven pages into a new story. Instant. Boom. Killed him… Tom’s death had a profound effect on me, because I was in my early thirties then. I’d been thinking, as I taught, well, I have all these stories that I want to write… and I have all the time in the world… and then Tom’s death happened, and I said, Boy. Maybe I don’t…

After Tom’s death, I said, “You know, I gotta try this. I don’t know if I can make a living as a full-time writer or not, but who knows how much time I have left?…” So I decided I would sell my house in Iowa and move to New Mexico. And I’ve never looked back.

Read the complete interview here.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Lord of Misrule

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Lord of Misrule

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LeeQuestion – What do Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, James Bond, Fu Manchu, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, John Belushi and Sherlock Holmes all have in common?

Answer – Lee. Christopher Lee (one of his autobiographies was titled Lord of Misrule)

In May, talented British actor Christopher Lee turns 92 years old. Thanks to his performance as Saruman in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, he is as popular today as he ever has been. And proving he knows how to get in on a winning franchise, he was Count Dooku in the second Star Wars trilogy. Which chronologically was the… oh, never mind.

But Lee first made his name in the horror flicks produced by Hammer Films in Great Britain in the late fifties and sixties. Lee played the monster (Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy), while friend Peter Cushing was the protagonist.

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Firefly, A Retrospective — Part 5

Firefly, A Retrospective — Part 5

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Firefly crewGood day, fellow Browncoats (and Alliance moles). So far, we’ve covered the pilot in Part 1, episodes two and three (“Train Job” and “Bushwhacked”) in Part 2, “Shindig” and “Safe “ in Part 3, and “Our Mrs. Reynolds” and “Jaynestown” (episodes 6 and 7) in Part 4.

We’re zooming into the second half of the season and coming up on some really great episodes. So make sure your six-shooter is loaded and let’s go.

Out of Gas (Episode 8)

This is one of my favorite episodes of all time, from any show. There is symmetry and a poignancy that we seldom see on broadcast television.

It begins with Serenity drifting in space. She is empty of crew. All is quiet. Then we see Mal fall to the floor with blood coming from somewhere. Next we are flashed back to Mal and Zoe checking out the ship for the first time. He is excited by the possibilities this little Firefly-class ship offers; she is not impressed.

Back in the “present,” Mal struggles to his feet with a piece of machinery in his hand and staggers off. Then we flashback to the crew sitting around the dinner table and sharing some laughs. It turns out to be Simon’s birthday and they surprise him with a cake. He’s about to blow out the candles when the lights flicker. A moment later, fire explodes from the engine compartment.

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Firefly, A Retrospective — Part 4

Firefly, A Retrospective — Part 4

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Firefly crew2-smallOh yes! We’re reaching the midway point of the first, and only, season of Firefly. I covered the pilot in Part 1, episodes two and three (“Train Job” and “Bushwhacked”) in Part 2, and four and five (“Shindig” and “Safe “) in Part 3.

If you’ve been reading this far, you know my feelings about the series. Some have postulated that perhaps we hold it in such high esteem because it was taken from us too soon. Well, in re-watching these episodes again, I was even more enthralled and entertained than the first (or second, or third…) time I saw them.

Today, we’re going to dive into two more episodes. Rev up the engine, Kaylee. It’s time to be a leaf on the wind.

Our Mrs. Reynolds (Episode 6)

A man and his wife driving a covered wagon are ambushed by bandits. The couple turn out to be Jayne and Mal (in drag), posing as settlers. When the bandit leader demands some personal time with the missus, Jayne replies that he married “a powerful ugly woman.” Mal and Jayne pull guns on the desperados.

A firefight ensues and Zoe pops out of the back of the wagon, gun blazing.

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En Garde!

En Garde!

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Robin Hood towerA few weeks ago, my colleague Jon Sprunk gave us a marvelous post on the weapons of fantasy. Like Jon, the weapons were very much what attracted me to fantasy in the first place. But I loved swords and sword fighting before I ever picked up my first fantasy novel (The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, in which, by the way, the tradition of named weapons is followed with Peter’s sword Rhindon).

I’m not sure what got Jon started off, but what attracted me to sword fighting, and prepared me for the fight scenes in my favourite genre, were movie sword fights, beginning particularly with those in Errol Flynn’s Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood.

It was from this last movie that I also gained my life-long love of archery, and the great archer Howard Hill, who did all the trick shots for Flynn, including the iconic splitting of the arrow.

Flynn did do all his own fencing in the films, but unlike his frequent opponent and co-star, Basil Rathbone, he didn’t take it up as a sport.

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Goth Chick News: M. Night Shyamalan Gets Small

Goth Chick News: M. Night Shyamalan Gets Small

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M. Night on the set of Sundowning with his production designer
M. Night on the set of Sundowning with his production designer

Okay, don’t immediately blow past this post because your eye caught the name M. Night Shyamalan – this is actually encouraging news.

The last time I wrote something about M. Night (as they call him in the biz that once thought he was the next Spielberg, but then mercilessly crucified him), he had left his tomato-covered director’s chair and returned to writing. M. Night completed the script for Devil back in 2009 and relative newcomer John Dowdle brought it to the big screen with a modest $10M budget. It grossed nearly $340M worldwide, definitively proving that M. Night is a masterful storyteller, but an inconsistent front man.

Case in point: in a rush of optimism following Devil, the Hollywood moneymen turned around and gave M. Night $130M and Will Smith (plus child) to write, direct and executive produce After Earth, which was an apocalyptic film in more ways than one.

So it is either by choice or necessity that M. Night’s latest project is very small and hasn’t been getting a ton of press beyond what M. Night himself has been dolling out; oh, and it’s being called a micro-budgeted horror film.

“Micro budget” is the latest, sexy term for independent films, or films not financially supported or promoted by a large studio or big-budget investors. If you want some examples of micro-budget films that went platinum, IMDB has compiled a handy list (ironically a good percentage of them are horror movies), and in the number 1 slot is The Blair Witch Project.

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One Arthurian Film to Rule Them All: John Boorman’s Excalibur

One Arthurian Film to Rule Them All: John Boorman’s Excalibur

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John Boorman's Excalibur-small

“I’m trying to suggest a kind of Middle Earth, in Tolkien terms. It’s a contiguous world; it’s like ours but different.”
— John Boorman, on Excalibur

As I began poking around into the history of Arthurian film adaptations, I was surprised to find a lot less of this sort of thing than I was expecting.

Good old Wikipedia lists 36 “relatively straightforward adaptations” made between 1904 and 2009. Many of these are rather obscure, to say the least, and quite a few deal with tangential aspects of the core legend, such as the stories of Arthurian knights, Parsifal, Launcelot, Gawain, and Galahad.

The earliest so-called adaptation is one of those tangential ones, Parsifal (1904), in which Thomas Edison’s thriving production company essentially just filmed a few scenes from Richard Wagner’s 1882 opera of the same name. Over at IMDB, they list a total of 46 features which star King Arthur. He seems to have first appeared on film in Launcelot and Elaine (1909), which explores a thwarted romance involving Launcelot, as detailed in Lord Alfred Tennyson’s epic poem, Idylls of the King.

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Firefly, A Retrospective — Part 3

Firefly, A Retrospective — Part 3

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Firefly banner 3-smallI’m back with my third installment of this series about the Firefly show. I covered the pilot in Part 1, and episodes two and three (“Train Job” and “Bushwhacked “) in Part 2.

This week we’re up to the fourth and fifth episodes. Sit back, put your starship on autopilot, and enjoy.

Shindig (Episode 4)

This one begins with a familiar sight: Mal, Zoe, and Jayne are in a cantina, this time playing pool with some traders while Inara watches. It turns out these friendly traders deal in transporting slaves, so Mal lifts their money clip and, naturally, starts a bar brawl.

Next, Serenity stops at the planet of Persephone, which we last saw in the pilot episode. They’re here to find work. Inara is in her shuttle looking for clients. She chats with Atherton Wing, a blueblood who invites her to a fancy party.

Mal comes in and they banter about her work, and his brawling. This scene sets up the rest of the episode, which mainly focuses on their budding relationship.

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