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Fantasy TV Weekly Update – Nov. 7

Fantasy TV Weekly Update – Nov. 7

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grimmAnother week, another set of new television goodness from the non-cable networks. Seriously, after a year where there’s been very little mainstream science fiction and fantasy on television, it’s nice to see it coming back in such full force. I’m still divided on which of the new shows I most like (though I still probably lean, just a touch, toward Once Upon a Time), though, and both seem to have some potential.

Now on to the show recaps…

Grimm – “Bears Will Be Bears,” Nov. 4 – A breaking and entering goes bad, resulting in one of the intruders becoming a missing person. This bizarre case brings Nick face to face with an ancient race performing a violent rite of passage. (If you can’t guess the fairy tale being invoked from the episode title, you need to turn off your television and read a book of fairy tales. I mean now. Here’s a free one.) Meanwhile, the bludbad Eddie is enlisted to help Nick protect his aunt, but he goes beyond mere comic relief when he lets his inner wolf out on too long a leash.

The best thing about this show, in my opinion, is Eddie, and I’m glad to see that they made such good use of him so quickly out of the gate. I could care less about Nick, to be honest, but that isn’t necessarily a show killer. After all, I was a huge fan of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, but the main thing that made 7 years of Buffy’s angst enjoyable was the quality supporting cast: Xander, Giles, Willow, and Oz. Still, Grimm is nowhere near Whedon-esque proportions yet, so I recommend they make Nick a bit more engaging. You can watch the episode online on the official NBC show page or over at Hulu.com.

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A Stoner Fantasy Review: Your Highness

A Stoner Fantasy Review: Your Highness

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yourhighnessSometimes a film comes along which redefines a genre. It brings a new, vibrant life to traditional storytelling structures. It makes you look forward to the new tales that will be inspired by it.

Your Highness is not one of those films.

No, this film is a straight-up satire. It’s from the director of Pineapple Express which was the Seth Rogen and James Franco film that tried to carve out a difficult niche. It was a stoner action film.

Your Highness, on the other hand, is a stoner fantasy film.

And, even on that premise, I don’t think it worked. The problem is that the various stoner film traits – drug use, vulgar language, blatant sexual comments – were applied so thickly that they proved distracting. At each and every turn, it served only one purpose: to completely pull you out of the story and draw attention to the fact that you were watching a film.

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Fiction Review: Neverwinter by R.A. Salvatore

Fiction Review: Neverwinter by R.A. Salvatore

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neverwinter-255

Long ago, in a time known a college I read my first R.A. Salvatore novel, The Crystal Shard. At that point a great portion of my life was wrapped up in The Forgotten Realms where the novel took place.

Little did I know as I flipped through the very fun, and incredibly D&D-like novel, that a periphery character named Drizzt D’Urdin would go on to be perhaps the most famous D&D character of all time.

So powerful were these books that they actually changed the map of the Forgotten Realms campaign world. My copy, a 1st print, has a map in which Drizzt’s exiled home, Icewind Dale, doesn’t even appear, Salvatore choosing a place beyond the current mythos of the realm.

I finished the Icewind Dale Trilogy and was greatly pleased with all things inside those pages. It was a true D&D adventure and had the makings of something so much larger. I was also taken with the fact that the trilogy was the only one I’ve ever seen in print to feature Larry Elmore, Clyde Caldwell, and Jeff Easley as cover artists in a series.

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Closing out Halloween with Algernon Blackwood: The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories

Closing out Halloween with Algernon Blackwood: The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories

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empty-house-1st-editionThe Empty House and Other Ghost Stories (1906)
By Algernon Blackwood

I’d say “Happy Halloween,” but by the time you read this it is probably already All-Saints Day, also known as “The Start of National Novel Writing Month.” Ah, whatever: Happy Halloween!

In celebration, I’ll turn to my favorite author of the “weird tale”: Algernon Blackwood. I’ve written about Mr. Blackwood before on this site when I reviewed his most unusual collection of fantasy tales, the uncategorizable Incredible Adventures. I’ll now turn the clock back to one of his earliest original collections, a volume that is a bit more on the ordinary side but still contains fine treasures.

Blackwood first emerged into supernatural fiction with The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories in 1906. Although the term “ghost story” would literally haunt Blackwood all of his career, much of his finest supernatural work has little to do with specters and the unquiet dead. The Empty House is the exception that proves the rule: at this early stage of fiction writing, Blackwood was interested in standard ghost tales, but showed signs that he wanted to go a different direction from the style of M. R. James that was popular at the time. The classics “The Wendigo” and the “Willows” were only another bend around the river.

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Fantasy TV Weekly Update – Oct. 31

Fantasy TV Weekly Update – Oct. 31

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grimmNow that there’s actually more than one good fantasy show on network television, I’ve decided to step back from the detailed Supernatural post mortem (so to speak) and instead to provide a weekly update on the happenings of these fantasy television series all at once. So, here we go with the breakdown for last week’s shows:

Supernatural – “Slash Fiction” (aired: Friday, Oct. 28) – Sam and Dean are up against … Sam and Dean. The Leviathans take a different tactic in an effort to take down the boys, by shapeshifting into them and going on a killing spree (and making sure they get caught on video doing so). Meanwhile, Bobby tries to find a way to kill the Leviathan they took captive at the end of the previous episode. Turns out that decapitation and the chemical borax make for a potent combination. We also learn that when Leviathans touch the person’s body (or, apparently, hair from a shower drain) to shapeshift into their physical form, they also absorb the feelings and thoughts of the target. The two Leviathans are pretty disgusted by the dysfunction of the boys, and the faux Dean reveals to Sam that he killed Amy. The episode will soon be available for online streaming at the Supernatural website.

Grimm – “Pilot” (aired: Friday, Oct. 28) – Check out the review here, including links to places where the episodes are streamed online.

Once Upon a Time – “The Thing You Love Most” (aired: Sunday, October 30) – In my review of the pilot, I said that the show really needed to make the present-day plotline more compelling. The second episode does a much better job of balancing the fairy tale plotline and the real world one, in a way that is reminiscent of the excellent way that Lost handled their flashback structure. The flashbacks of this episode focus on what the Evil Queen had to do in order to enact the dark curse that trapped them all in this world … which included a deal with Rumpelstiltskin and a powerful sacrifice. The present day storyline begins to draw out some better characterization than in the pilot, especially among the local sheriff (not sure who he was in fairy tale world), Mr. Hopper (i.e. Jiminy Cricket), Regina (the Evil Queen), and Emma Swan herself, as Regina’s attempts to force Emma out of town begin to draw in more participants on both sides. It also becomes a lot more clear what sort of person Emma is and that she isn’t going to take attacks lying down. This episode is available for online streaming through the official website and on Hulu.

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Fairy Tale Television, Part 2: NBC’s Grimm Pilot

Fairy Tale Television, Part 2: NBC’s Grimm Pilot

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grimmAs I mentioned last week, there are two major series starting this fall that are based on fairy tales coming to our world. The second of those series is NBC’s Grimm, which comes across as an attempt to wed fairy tales to a police procedural, sort of like Supernatural merged with Criminal Minds.

The result is a particularly brutal program, leaning strongly toward the horror end of the spectrum. I’m not sure if something this dark will really make it as a success on NBC. Supernatural is a cult success, which is fine for the sort of ratings that the CW is aiming for, but NBC would consider the same ratings level a failure.

The concept: Nick Burckhardt is a police detective who begins to see strange visions, only to learn that it’s because he is descended from a family line of Grimms – those with the power to see supernatural creatures for what they really are. It’s his destiny to hunt down these creatures. …

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Swords from the East, Swords from the Sea by Harold Lamb, a Review

Swords from the East, Swords from the Sea by Harold Lamb, a Review

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swords-from-the-eastSwords from the Sea
Harold Lamb
Howard Andrew Jones, ed.
Bison Books (552 pp, $24.95, 2010)

Swords from the East
Harold Lamb
Howard Andrew Jones, ed.
Bison Books (476 pp, $24.95, 2010)

It must have been something, the pre-television age when pulp magazines were a widely consumed form of entertainment. I can only imagine the anticipation of opening up one’s mailbox, finding inside the latest copy of Adventure magazine, and settling in to an evening of rousing tales by the likes of Talbot Mundy, H. Rider Haggard, and Harold Lamb. It was a time of pulse-pounding action and tales of distant historic epochs on the printed page.

Those days are now gone, and for many years the contents of those now-yellowed pulps were largely inaccessible, save through the efforts of patient and often deep-pocketed enthusiasts. But fortunately some of these works are now being collected in anthologies. Editor Howard Andrew Jones has done the Herculean task of assembling Lamb’s stories in the eight volume “Harold Lamb Library” series by Bison Books. These include Swords from the Desert and Swords from the West, and recently concluded with Swords from the Sea and Swords from the East.

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Here’s That Other Thing … The One From Another World

Here’s That Other Thing … The One From Another World

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thing-from-another-world-51The Thing from Another World (1951)

Directed by Christian Nyby and (uncredited) Howard Hawks. Starring Margaret Sheridan, Kenneth Tobey, Robert Cornthwaite, Douglas Spencer, James Young, Dewey Martin, Robert Nichols, William Self, James Arness.

John W. Campbell’s novella “Who Goes There?” has now produced three film adaptations: two classics and a footnote. After recovering from reviewing the footnote, it occurred to me that The Thing 2011 has two positives I failed to mention: it makes viewers appreciate how great John Carpenter’s 1982 version is, and how great Howard Hawks’s 1951 version is.

More than enough ink and bandwidth has covered The Thing ’82, and as much as I adore that movie, I have nothing new to contribute to the discussion of it beyond the comparisons I made in last week’s review. (Edit: Unless I choose to survey John Carpenter’s career.) However, the 1951 film, The Thing from Another World, hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves in the current collective bashing of the new movie. If I’m going to point out how poor The Thing ’11 is, it’s only fair that I smash it with the Howard Hawks film as well. Why should John Carpenter have all the fun?

The Thing from Another World is a great film in its own way. When John Carpenter set out to re-make it, he made the intelligent decision not to duplicate its style and instead return to the source material and create something new. The result was two Things that can stand side-by-side, each adding to the other.

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Game Review: Innistrad from Magic the Gathering

Game Review: Innistrad from Magic the Gathering

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innistrad-werewolf

Magic The Gathering has recently released another set, this one featuring the dark plane of Innistrad. The end word of title in itself, Strad, should tell you all you need to know to get started here.

The Vampire Strad, as most older gamers will remember, was the famous vampire found in the classic TSR module I6 Ravenloft. That particular gaming supplement was so popular that it spun off its own boxed set and gothic fantasy dimension in the early 90s.

I’ve always been a fan of I6 for a couple of reasons. A: The cover might be the best work Clyde Caldwell ever did for TSR, and that’s saying something. And B: It featured the first TSR 3D map which detailed Strad’s castle.

Now I recently picked up a copy of this module, took it to Milwaukee, and had Caldwell sign it as Wayne Reynold’s birthday gift because the cover inspired Wayne to become an artist. That in itself should be enough to put it into TSR’s artistic top 10, but as the concept of Strad and his new domain began to grow, the creative think tank at TSR began to fail in how to deliver it.

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Goth Chick News: For Your Halloween Reading Pleasure: The Night Circus

Goth Chick News: For Your Halloween Reading Pleasure: The Night Circus

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image001When I first heard about new author Erin Morgenstern’s book The Night Circus, it was billed as an antidote for the withdraw symptoms Harry Potter fans were experiencing. Though I wouldn’t go so far as saying I’m having Potter DDT’s, I must admit that the sudden void left in my literary life by the lack of pure escapism fantasy was making me a bit twitchy.

But good luck living up to my Hogwarts-sized expectations, I thought. Another book about magic we don’t need.

However, once The Night Circus hit store shelves on September 13th I couldn’t seem to get around the title. It just kept nagging my imagination, which conjured up images of an entire carnival appearing over night in what yesterday was just an empty field, and only being open for business after dark.

“If they’re grouping it in with Harry Potter, it must be a kids book,” I thought, and tried my best to ignore it.

After all, J.K. Rowling’s ability to hit that perfect chord between writing for kids yet entertaining adults was a rare thing indeed.

I busied myself with other things and shunned The Night Circus for a whole 10 days.

Then I read that on September 22nd Ms. Morgenstern’s very first outing as a novelist had reached number eleven on USA Today’s bestseller list, and that a full nine months before the book had hit the stands Summit Entertainment had purchased the movie rights.

All right, fine.

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