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Movie review: Captain America: The First Avenger

Movie review: Captain America: The First Avenger

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Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Directed by Joe Johnston. Starring Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Tommy Lee Jones, Haley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Dominic Cooper, Stanley Tucci, Toby Jones.
captain-america-red-skull-movie-comparison1
How much a geek am I? After my first screening of Captain America, I stood up and thrust both my hands in the air with balled fists and screamed “Hail HYDRA!” Yeah, they may be the bad guys, but they have a great rallying cry.

I have waited since I was twelve years old for a big theatrical Captain America movie. (That 1990s straight-to-vid quickie directed by Albert Pyun does not count.) Ever since I was old enough to read comics on my own, Cap was my favorite superhero. I have spent an enormous amount of time on my own blog going through the chronological history of the Captain America comic book. All that Captain America: The First Avenger needed to do was not mess up the Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s star-spangled hero and I would be happy.

Now I’m ecstatic. I unabashedly love this movie. It is the finest product yet to come from Marvel Studios and one of the best superhero movies ever made. I’m going back to see it a second time the moment I can. (In fact, by the time you read this, I probably will already have seen it a second time; I watched the first show on Friday morning.)

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Among Others

Among Others

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among-others1It’s hot, I just downloaded Lion (which is the only cool thing happening in these parts) and I’ve managed to avoid any car crashes. Unlike other folks here, since I don’t have much going on, here’s my review of Jo Walton’s Among Others.

Could do worse things than turn the AC up high and read this one.

Masterpiece: The Seventh Man by Frederick Faust (Max Brand)

Masterpiece: The Seventh Man by Frederick Faust (Max Brand)

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seventh-man-modern-coverPrelim: The Seventh Man is in the public domain and available for free from Project Gutenberg in a variety of e-book formats. If you want a hard copy, there is a paperback print-on-demand edition available from Phoenix Rider; I do not know what the text quality is on it, but it’s only $5.99. Bottom line: no excuse not to give the novel a try.

Last year, I posted three articles about Frederick Faust, a staggeringly prolific author of Western fiction and other genres for the pulp magazines. Writing under the pseudonym “Max Brand” and eighteen others pen names, Faust was a one-man writing army that dominated the Western fiction field from the end of World War I until his death as a journalist on the Italian front in World War II. Readers responded positively to the three articles, the first covering Brand’s general career, the next analyzing a collection of his early Western short fiction, and the third examining his rare foray into science fiction, The Smoking Land.

But the response that interested me the most was my own. Those are among my favorite posts I’ve put up on Black Gate in the three years I’ve held this Tuesday spot. It isn’t that I feel proud of the writing and research on them. It’s that they made me realize what an anchor Frederick Faust is in my own writing, and how much I learn from him every time I read one of his works. Reading Faust and researching his life and letters is like coming home to a place that I didn’t realize is “home” when I was away from it.

So I’ve returned to the topic, and I’ve brought one of Faust’s great novels with me, The Seventh Man (1921). So far, I’ve only examined the Western through his short stories, but Faust’s major impact on the genre is in his novels.

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Why I Love Harry Potter (and J.K. Rowling)

Why I Love Harry Potter (and J.K. Rowling)

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hpteaserI remember walking through a movie theater and seeing a teaser poster for the first Harry Potter film. It showed an owl carrying a card addressed to Harry, in the cupboard under the stairs. There it is, to the right.

I was not a Harry Potter fan at the time, so I reacted to this much the same way I would react to a Living with the Kardasians film: annoyance and disgust.

See, being a fan of science fiction and fantasy is supposed to be outside the norm. I’d built my entire life around the idea that I was different from everyone else. (More on my crisis of geekdom in an upcoming essay.)

And here was this stinking boy wizard turning everyone into a fantasy geek. People who had never even heard of Narnia, Krynn, or Middle Earth, who wouldn’t know a Balrog from a Chromatic Dragon, rambled on and on about Hogwarts and He Who Must Not Be Named.

What about him so transfixed everyone?

Oh, I would learn.

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A Review of Twelve by Jasper Kent

A Review of Twelve by Jasper Kent

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twelveTwelve
By Jasper Kent
Pyr (447 pages, $17.00, September 2010)

Twelve is set in Russia in the year 1812. While America was fighting a trans-Atlantic war against the British, Napoleon led a Grand Armee of 450,000 soldiers across the Niemen river into Russia. The outnumbered and undertrained Tsarist armies fought a series of retreating actions, and the French successfully occupied Moscow just as winter was setting in.

The novel is narrated by Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, a soldier already weary from a lifetime of war and marked by the loss of two fingers in a Turkish dungeon. At the time of the French invasion he is assigned to a unit of three other soldiers tasked with undermining the French war effort via espionage and commando raids.

The opening line of chapter 1 introduces their strategy: “Dmitry Fetyukovich said he knew some people.” Dmitry knows, in fact, a group of mercenaries from the Danube river valley who fought with the Russians in an earlier conflict with the Turks. These mercenaries share a common interest with Aleksei and his comrades: They love nothing better than killing Frenchmen, and their efficacy is legendary.

As the mercenaries approach Moscow from the south, Aleksei hears of a series of unusual “plagues” breaking out in small towns along their route, giving him a faint feeling of unease. At last, late at night, twelve men arrive in Moscow under the leadership of a man who introduces himself as Zmyeevich — in Russian, “Son of the Serpent.”

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Game Review: Conquest of Nerath

Game Review: Conquest of Nerath

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No matter if its the cover or the interior shots, this game's art is off the hook
No matter if its the cover or the interior shots, this game’s art is off the hook

In my lifetime I’ve played a lot of games, some more than others, but if any board game stands out above the rest as eating away massive chunks of my time it’s the WWII classic Axis and Allies. In the 80s, upon the game’s release, I fell in such deep infatuation with this game that I actually left it out on a table in my living room and played against myself for the length of an entire summer. Yeah, you know how you see ‘smart people’ in movies playing chess against themselves? Well, that was me and Axis and Allies.

I was so devoted to it, that I’ve actually only lost a single game in twenty-six years, and that was the first one I ever played [although I do have a draw in there someplace].

Now, you might be wondering why I’m bringing Axis and Allies up in a post concerning Wizard’s of the Coast’s new epic game Conquest of Nerath. Well, quite simply, because in all my years of gaming, and all the games I’ve played, I’d yet to find something in the same realm of awesome as A&A until I sat down to play Conquest.

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Masterpiece: The Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett

Masterpiece: The Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett

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PZO8005-Cover.inddI committed a major heresy, in public and on record, against the sword-and-sorcery community when I stated on the recording for a podcast that, in the realm of “sword-and-sorcery” fiction, I prefer Leigh Brackett over Robert E. Howard. Although at least one participant on the podcast seconded my opinion, I do understand why most sword-and-sorcery readers cannot go with me on this. Howard is, after all, the Enthroned God of the genre. And, strictly speaking, Brackett did not write fantasy or historicals. Her specialty was action-oriented science fiction with heavy fantasy influences, the sub-genre of science-fantasy known as “planetary romance.” (Sometimes called “sword-and-planet.” I hate that term.)

I love Robert E. Howard’s work; it’s foundational for me. But, it’s “not that I love Howard less, but that I love Brackett more.” To that extent, I want to promote the sheer awesomeness that is Leigh Brackett whenever I can. And in her 1949 novel The Sword of Rhiannon (buy it here!) she reached what I believe is her apex: a planetary romance set across an ancient version of Mars, crammed with sword-swinging action, pirate-style swashbuckling, alien super-science, a hero as flinty as granite, an alluring and surprising femme fatale warrior, and an overarching theme of redemption, loss, and futility that ends up pushing what sounds like a standard adventure into a work of intricacy and overwhelming emotion.

Leigh Brackett (1915–1978), a long time resident of the same neighborhoods in Los Angeles where I grew up and still live, was a student of Howard’s work and an immense admirer. However, she didn’t copy him when she started her own career, but infused his passionate style with her own passions. Brackett shows the influence of other predecessors — Clark Asthon Smith, A. Merritt, C. L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, Otis Adelbert Kline, Edgar Rice Burroughs — but her mixture is blended so perfectly that all of it feels fresh and driven. I just finished another re-reading of The Sword of Rhiannon, and I am as thunderstruck as ever with how damn great Leigh Brackett was at what she did. Even more, I am awed at how modern her tale feels, even though the outer hull shows it as an old-fashioned pulp romance. Not that there’s anything wrong with the old pulp style; I still read Edgar Rice Burroughs avidly. But Brackett to this day stands in a class of her own.

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Game Review: Dragon Dominoes in Looney Labs’ Seven Dragons

Game Review: Dragon Dominoes in Looney Labs’ Seven Dragons

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sevendragons_1Two of my favorite card games come from Looney Labs: Fluxx and Chrononauts.  One of the major selling points of these games, for me, is that they’re creative games that have victory conditions that can change on a dime. You can be close to winning and then, with a lucky and well-played turn by an opponent, you can find yourself on the losing end.

Seven Dragons captures this chaotic feel, mixing it with some great fantasy artwork by Larry Elmore. The name comes from two different aspects of the game:

  • There are seven different colors of dragons represented in the the game: red, black, gold, blue, green, silver, and rainbow
  • The goal of the game is to create a chain of seven dragons of your designated color

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A (very) guilty pleasure: Dennis McKiernan’s The Iron Tower Trilogy

A (very) guilty pleasure: Dennis McKiernan’s The Iron Tower Trilogy

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the-dark-tideThe publication of Terry Brooks’ Sword of Shannara in 1977 was a watershed moment in fantasy literature. The success of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings left fans clamoring for more epic, secondary world fantasy with maps, and with The Sword of Shannara Brooks delivered. Its publication began a trend of Tolkien-inspired fantasy that deeply marked (marred, others might say) the genre thereafter.

But the ensuing years haven’t been kind to Brooks. Lin Carter, editor of the acclaimed Ballantine Adult fantasy series, said of The Sword of Shannara ,” [it’s]the single most cold-blooded, complete rip-off of another book that I have ever read”. Despite the commercial success of Shannara and its sequels, its now widely considered to be the poster child for Biggest Tolkien Ripoff.

But, prevailing claims to the contrary, The Sword of Shannara is not even close to that moniker. The championship belt for most slavish LOTR imitation (that I have read, at least) hangs proudly about the waist of Dennis McKiernan’s The Iron Tower Trilogy. In comparison to The Dark Tide, Shadows of Doom, and The Darkest Day, Shannara is a veritable bastion of originality sprung whole and entire from the forehead of Zeus. The Iron Tower Trilogy is, in fact, The Lord of the Rings with the serial numbers filed off. Crudely. Anyone who possesses even a passing familiarity with Tolkien’s masterwork should stand aghast at the “similarities.”

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Diana Rowland’s My Life as A White Trash Zombie

Diana Rowland’s My Life as A White Trash Zombie

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My Life as A White Trash Zombiewhite-trash-zombie2
Diana Rowland
DAW (320 pp., $7.99, July 2011)
Reviewed by Patty Templeton

Angel Crawford is a pill-popping, self-described loser who’s found naked on Old Bayou Road after an overdose, only when she wakes up in the hospital…something’s not quite right.

She never used to waft of rot.

If it wasn’t trouble enough that Angel is slowly starting to smell more and more like a pile of dead cats soaked in sewage on a hot summer day, well, she has a new job. Ok, so it’s not like Burger Bayou was taking her places, but really, who wants to work in a morgue? Angel never did, but a mysterious note informs her that if she doesn’t take the job and keep it for at least one month, she’ll go to jail. Sure, it’s delivering dead bodies and assisting in autopsies, but you don’t get paid for normal rehab. Angel takes the gig.

Soon after, fingers skull-deep during an autopsy, Angel realizes that she wants to eat brains. Justifiably, she flips. It doesn’t help when she finds another note on her windshield that reads If you crave it, eat it.

To make matters worse, somebody starts killing off all the zombies around town.

This is not your average zombie novel and it might piss off horror purists who like their monsters in predictable niches. Angel doesn’t shamble. She isn’t dull-witted. She’s not a gorehound. In fact, it’s questionable if she is even a monster. She’s a woman who’s had a lot of bad breaks in life, the most recent of which was being turned into a zombie who has to drink brain smoothies to keep from decomposing. Some folks might contend that Diana Rowland’s zombies aren’t zombies. They might be right. Angel is closer to a vampire than not, only instead of blood healing her, it’s dead people’s brains. What does it matter, as long as the story catches you?

Amidst the brain saws, busted heads and maggots, there’s the introspective story of Angel Crawford, high school drop-out and general ef-up, finally getting on a stable path. It’s not action-heavy. There are no zombie hordes. Only a woman fighting her way through everyday life, which includes a past filled with drugs, the wrong man, an alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother. It’s a humorous, light-gore novel that you could probably get away with recommending to any of your friends that like both Jodi Picoult and C.S.I. Similarly, if you dig books from a zombie’s point of view, like Breathers or Warm Bodies, you’ve got a good chance of enjoying My Life as A White Trash Zombie.

brain1 brain11I give it two out of three brains. And seriously, the cover is AWESOME. Now that’s a le freakin’ sexy zombie.