Latest The Hobbit Production Video: A Deep Delve Into 3D

Latest The Hobbit Production Video: A Deep Delve Into 3D

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lee-and-howe-3d-glassesI still haven’t quite come to grips with The Hobbit in 3D. I’ve got a few 3D films under my belt—Avatar, Captain America, Green Lantern, and Jaws 3—and to be honest, the added dimension hasn’t done much for me. Avatar made the most of it with its rich images of Pandora; the other films felt like they were trying to capitalize on a fad (hey, look, there’s a shield coming at me!) in order to take in a few extra bucks at the gate.

In short, I still prefer good old fashioned 2D, even after watching the latest The Hobbit production video on Peter Jackson’s Facebook page .  Judging by the mixed feelings in the comments, others prefer 2D, too. “Love your work Peter, the technology is fascinating, and I can’t wait for 2012. But this 3d stuff is an absolutely horrid and wretched fad which adds zero value to any movie which incorporates it,” writes one commenter. But there were many more positives than negatives amongst the comments, and having viewed the video I’m a bit more optimistic with the thought of donning a pair of uncomfortable plastic glasses and settling in to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in 3D next December.

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SIR JULIAN THE APOSTATE: Doomed Knight, Tragic Hero

SIR JULIAN THE APOSTATE: Doomed Knight, Tragic Hero

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legends-cvr2Swords Against Darkness.
Heroic Fantasy.
The Year’s Best Horror Stories.
Distant Worlds.
Alien Worlds.
Void.

What sword-slinging hero appeared in all of these anthologies and magazines (and more) before his adventures were collected into a single impressive volume? The answer is Sir Julian the Apostate, a knight fallen from grace, and as doomed a hero as you’ll find in the history of sword-and-sorcery fiction. For swashbuckling fantasy as dark and seductive as a vampiric lamia, look no further than the saga of Sir Julian, as chronicled in Darrell Schweitzer’s WE ARE ALL LEGENDS.

The twelve stories comprising the book were first published between 1976 to 1981, definitely a “golden age” for sword-and-sorcery novels, magazines, and comics. Yet unlike much of what was published during the S&S “boom” of the era, Schweitzer’s tales of Sir Julian and his weird fate are all timeless gems.

“It was in an old land that the battle had taken place; a country of empty halls and deserted castles where ruined walls stood protecting nothing from nothing, and roadways faded into the earth and led nowhere. For three days in this place the swords of the two armies sang their terrible song on shields and armor, and when the fighting was done and all was still, a deep fog covered the sodden ground.”
–WE ARE ALL LEGENDS

This cycle of related stories includes witches, demons, vampires, zombies, ghosts, and far stranger things. It blurs and then erases the line between fantasy and horror. The book’s main character enables Schweitzer to twist the whole “knight on a quest” idea into a deep strangeness all its own. …

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Goth Chick News: Ridley Scott Fans Rejoice

Goth Chick News: Ridley Scott Fans Rejoice

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image014Raise your hand if you’re a Ridley Scott fan.

Hands up now.

Okay, well that’s pretty much everyone so I’m probably about to make you all very happy.

For those of you who are less familiar with the offerings Scott is famous for, let me begin with a short history lesson.

In the recent past Ridley Scott was the director behind Robin Hood (the Russell Crowe version not that abomination with Kevin Costner), and Gladiator.  In the 90’s it was Thelma and Louise, and Black Rain.

But way back in the late 70’s and early 80’s Scott hit consecutive home runs with only his second and third directorial outings; Alien in 1979 and Blade Runner in 1982.

The sci-fi and horror genres would never be the same.

Both movies took place in the future. Yet very contrary to most depictions of snowy white flight decks and Jetson-like gadgetry, Scott’s future was grimy, inconvenient and crawling with things that wanted you dead.  Whether it was an erotic dancer who could crush your skull with her inner thighs or an eight-foot drooling crustacean that could eat off your face with not one but two protruding jaws, the movie-going-public was clearly scarred and addicted simultaneously.

The cult-of-Scott may not have been instantaneous but it was darn near close.

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Art of the Genre: Inteview with Daniel R. Horne

Art of the Genre: Inteview with Daniel R. Horne

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horne-saving-300

It’s Autumn here in L.A. which means a bit of rain slips into the forecast and the temperature falls to a frigid 55 degrees. Ryan Harvey likes to roll into our Redondo offices with a large coat, collection of Blu-ray discs in this arms and a smile on his face. It’s a good work if you can get it, and as I sat relishing the sun warming me from my beach-side window I got an all too familiar buzz from my receptionist’s desk.

Somehow, someway, there is a different kind of sound when Kandy transfers a call from John O’Neill to my office. I’d like to say it comes off more urgent, but instead I’m going to confess it feels more like evil…

Nonetheless, I picked up that phone and was greeted by the all too familiar vocal styling of our displaced Canadian Editor-in-Chief. After a handful of sentences, all finished with ‘aye’, I was directed to LAX for a flight to Philadelphia.

Normally I’d protest such an abrupt departure from sunny southern California for the northeast in November, but John always has a carrot well worth the trip. This time, I was crossing the Delaware River in reverse to George Washington’s famous sneak-attack as I slipped into New Jersey for a meeting with fantasy artist extraordinaire Daniel R. Horne.

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National Novel Writing Month—Whether You Like It Or Not

National Novel Writing Month—Whether You Like It Or Not

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nanowrimoI’ve discussed National Novel Writing Month before, and if you want the lowdown on this annual global community creative writing project to kick people to a 50,000-word novel in thirty days, you can read about it here. Today I come to you as a scarred old warrior observing the changes that can happen after a few consecutive years of participation. Not changes to me, but changes to the world that NaNoWriMo has created.

I have now been on the battlefront of NaNoWriMo for four years, which makes me a “veteran.” I’ve also “won” three years running, and with a current total of 22,000 words as of Day 7, it looks like I’ll rack up another victory this year, walking away with a PNG badge. And a finished manuscript, the best reward possible.

After the third year of participation, I discovered something, and that in turn has brought me a realization this year: the actual “rules” of NaNoWriMo are irrelevant. You no longer need to try to “write a new novel, starting from zero words, and reach 50,000 before the end of the month.” Since National Novel Writing Month isn’t a contest offering a prize, you can’t “do it wrong.” You can “cheat” on your word count on the official site—many do, I’m sure, since I’ve seen some impossible word counts—but that achieves nothing. There are other, creative ways to break the rules. You can choose to start writing a screenplay instead, or tackle short stories one after the other (as I did last year), or use the time to finish a novel you’ve already started (as I am doing this year). NaNoWriMo’s official term for anyone who does this a “Rebel.” It isn’t a pejorative term, but the welcome umbrella for anyone who wants to use November to kick their writing machines’ engine back to sputtering life. Every year, I find more people joining the ranks of the Rebel Alliance; it’s usually folks who have succeeded writing new novels in the previous years.

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A review of Scarce Resources by Brendan Detzner

A review of Scarce Resources by Brendan Detzner

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scarce-resourcesScarce Resources, by Brendan Detzner
Self-published (153 pages, $9.99, July 2011)

Brendan Detzner has been reading his stories of unholy compromise, quiet madness and apocalypses both great and small at Chicago open mic events for several years now. His first collection, Scarce Resources, is now available. If you’re not familiar with his work, these eighteen stories are a great overview of what he’s been doing.

The collection opens with “The Black Plague,” a mixture of bio-terror and supernatural horror that shows how much more fearsome life-and-death decisions are when placed in human hands than when left to the whims of nature.

“Dinosaurs,” “Dress Rehearsal” and “Humility” are also set in post-apocalyptic worlds where the drive to continue and rebuild society is either an act of ultimate hope or ultimate denial. I especially liked the playful tone of “Dinosaurs” (opening on a tennis match with the Devil), while “Dress Rehearsal” is reminiscent of Philip K. Dick.

“Music for Scalpel and Prepared Piano,” the shortest piece in the collection, illustrates in less than a hundred words how the path of evil can so easily become a slippery slope. “Quiet” deals with a similar theme, except that the atrocities he describes are sadly real (and still being funded by your tax dollars).

Given the recent death of Amy Winehouse, “The House Rock and Roll Built” may seem a bit more timely than originally intended, while “Veronica” portrays a brutal woman living in a brutal world, finding humanity in a bit of nostalgia.

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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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Gunpowder, Treason, and Occupation: V For Vendetta

Gunpowder, Treason, and Occupation: V For Vendetta

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V For Vendetta 1I’m taking a bit of a break from the Romanticism and Fantasy posts, as I’ve got a few other things I’d like to write about. To start with, since I discussed Alan Moore’s Marvelman a few weeks ago, I thought I’d take a look now at V For Vendetta. V started as a series that ran, like Marvelman, in the early 80s in the black-and-white anthology magazine Warrior. Though the story was left incomplete when Warrior folded, in 1988 the series was republished in colour by DC Comics, and Moore and artist David Lloyd were able to finish it as they’d hoped. (Some spoilers for the book follow; also spoilers for Watchmen, oddly enough.)

A bit of cultural background may be in order here to explain V’s iconography, themes, and why the main character’s mask is suddenly turning up in protest movements in metropolitan centres. Guy Fawkes was a militant Catholic in early 17th-century England, part of a group of confederates led by Robert Catesby, who planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament and kill King James I. Fawkes was apprehended underneath Parliament, near the conspirators’ vast store of gunpowder. There has been much discussion since about how much England’s intelligence services knew about the plot; it seems that James’ spymaster Robert Cecil may have known about the scheme in advance, and let it proceed in an effort to capture higher-placed Catholic agents. In any event, Fawkes was tortured and executed along with seven other conspirators. The anniversary of what would have been the date of the explosion, November 5, became an annual celebration in England, marked with bonfires and the burning-in-effigy of Guy Fawkes.

Moore and Lloyd used that imagery when they created V For Vendetta. They had planned, at the suggestion of Warrior editor Dez Skinn, to create a comics series focussing on a pulp-era gangbuster figure. As they talked over that idea, it turned into a near-future adventure series, following a heroic anarchist out to overthrow a fascist totalitarian state. They used the iconography of Guy Fawkes as the visual inspiration for their hero, dressing him in 17th century garb and a smiling mask, and began the series with the destruction of the Houses of Parliament that the historical Fawkes couldn’t accomplish.

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John Joseph Adams buys Lightspeed and Fantasy Magazines from Prime Books

John Joseph Adams buys Lightspeed and Fantasy Magazines from Prime Books

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fantasy-magazine-56It’s been a tumultuous season for fantasy magazines.

In August Marvin Kaye surprised us by acquiring Weird Tales from Wildside Press, and last week we told you Realms of Fantasy magazine had folded again. And now Sean Wallace at Prime Books informs us that he’s sold Lightspeed and Fantasy magazines to current editor John Joseph Adams.

Lightspeed and Fantasy magazines are two of the finest online fiction magazines. Fantasy originally appeared in 2005, publishing six print issues before moving online in 2007. Its editors have included Sean Wallace, Paul Tremblay, and Cat Rambo, with Adams taking the reins in March of this this year.

Lightspeed, which publishes short science fiction, debuted in June 2010 with John Joseph Adams at the helm; it was a 2011 Hugo Award nominee for Best Semiprozine, and Adams was a 2011 nominee for Best Professional Editor, Short Form.

John Joseph Adams has been called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble.com. His anthologies include The Way of the Wizard, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, and The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Adams has not announced if he’ll make any changes to the magazines. “It’s an exciting time to be involved in publishing,” he says in the press release. “Models are changing and so is the readership, and online magazines have a better shot at sustainability than ever have before. I believe the possibilities for growth are tremendous, and I look forward to staying in the vanguard of this new frontier.”

We last covered Fantasy Magazine in April with issue #49.

Read the complete press release here.

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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