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Goth Chick Crypt Notes: Nightmare World

Goth Chick Crypt Notes: Nightmare World

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image0043I don’t know about you, but I never got a really clear look at horror comics as a kid, which may be why they still intrigue me to this day.

Back then, the acquisition of such contraband was generally via my older male cousins who were smart enough, even at that tender young age, to secret them inside the cover of The Archies. The comic would then be stashed between my mattress and box springs to be removed only after I had heard my parents go to bed. At this magic time, the comic would be quietly pulled out (don’t crinkle the pages too much, parents can hear that from the other side of the house) and read under a mound of stifling covers by the glow of a dimming flashlight.

The upshot of reading banned material was that I would scare myself silly and fall asleep clutching the flickering flashlight until the batteries went dead. It always seemed that the shadows cast under the covers and against the pages muted the comic book colors and make the icky stuff inside come to life.

Thus the reason horror comics were verboten.

Which, I suspect, is how I gained a lifelong addiction to horror comics and likely also the cause of ever-increasingly strong contact lenses as an adult.

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Welcome to Bordertown: What Would Eilonwy Do?

Welcome to Bordertown: What Would Eilonwy Do?

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gnomesThis morning on my walk to work, I spotted a man crossing a lawn. His arms were very full. Of garden gnomes.

You know, gnomes? With the blue coats and the red hats? The Rien Poortvliet kind?

“Morning!” I said.

“Morning,” he said. “I got a delivery. Gnome delivery.”

After we’d passed each other, and I’d spent a good while grinning, I thought to myself, “I know why that just happened. That happened because I started reading Welcome to Bordertown on the train today.”

(Hey! Heads up! If  you follow the above link to the Bordertown website, then click through the fancy links there to Amazon to purchase any of the new books on that page, then Terri Windling’s Endicott Studio gets a small kick-back from Amazon.com. And all of that money is donated to a shelter for homeless kids. More info here.)

Now, I’m only half a story in — the first one. But half a story in means I’ve already read the two introductions, by Terri Windling and Holly Black respectively, and also the “Bordertown Basics” which is sort of like a mix of the Not for Tourists Guide to Chicago, and Wolfe and Gaiman’s wicked little chapbook, A Walking Tour of the Shambles. It includes a weekly advisory about gang movement, monster sightings, pickpockets and missing gargoyles.

This bit made me chortle:

“The Mock Avenue street association would like to apologize to everyone for fixing the church tower clock last week, which caused widespread confusion. It has now been restored to its usual wrong time.”

But let me back up a little. Reading the introductions, I started to get a strange feeling. Gene Wolfe described a poem once as giving him “that fairy tale feeling.” He may have been quoting someone famous, like Dunsany or something. He does that. This was like that feeling, but it was also another feeling mixed in. …

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A Review of George MacDonald’s Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women

A Review of George MacDonald’s Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women

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phantastes-carterWarning: Some spoilers ahead

Advancing a claim that something is the “first” anything is daring a slippery slope, but saying a book is the “first fantasy” is rather like taking a leap onto a Slip and Slide greased with the gelatin exudate of Cthulhu. George MacDonald’s Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women (1858) could be the first fantasy story … but then, what about Shakespeare’s The Tempest, or Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queene, or the Epic of Gilgamesh, or … you get the picture. I happen to agree with our own Matthew David Surridge that Phantastes is likely not the first pure fantasy novel, for the fact that, although it involves another world, it “never quite [leaves] the real world behind.” It’s the stuff of dreams, with a clear path back to earth.

Regardless, Phantastes is without question one of the cornerstones of the genre, and stands poised at the cusp of early works containing fantastic elements, to those that feature fully developed, independent secondary worlds.

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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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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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Late for the Party, But Glad I Made It: Rapunzel . . . I Mean Tangled

Late for the Party, But Glad I Made It: Rapunzel . . . I Mean Tangled

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tangled-posterTangled (2010)
Directed by Nathan Greno and Byron Howard. Featuring the Voices of Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, Donna Murphy, Brad Garrett, Ron Perelman, Jeffrey Tambor, Richard Kiel.

There are many moments in Disney’s CGI animated film Tangled (out on DVD and Blu-ray this week) where it seems the story is putting itself on a collision course with an ironic, rib-nudging joke about fairy-tale fantasy clichés. For example, young heroine Rapunzel, feeling freedom from her tower prison for the first time, dashes through a forest grove while singing. Suddenly, a flight of bluebirds rush above her head and flit up through a gap in the leaves into an azure sky; Rapunzel gazes at their disappearing flight, enrapt with the metaphor of liberation.

Cue Rapunzel tripping, or a huge bird dropping splatting onto her head, or a helicopter smashing into the birds, or a scratchy needle-drop ripping apart the soundtrack.

But . . . it doesn’t happen!

I think that’s wonderful. Ten years after Shrek came out, Disney Animation has fired back at the “Ironic Fairy-Tale” genre that the DreamWorks hit fostered into a subgenre. Shrek inspired not only three increasingly bad sequels, but also films like Hoodwinked, Happily N’Ever After, and the live-action Ella Enchanted. Shrek itself was something of a personal vendetta from former Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg against his old employer: no chance was passed up to blast away at the Mouse House, often viciously.

It was funny for a time, and if viewers wanted less ironic fare they could at least turn to Disney’s partner Pixar. Disney got back to its classic style with the traditionally animated The Princess and the Frog in 2009, although the script and design updated the fairy tale into the early twentieth century. With Tangled, the company was eager to grab up the Medieval wonderland that had made them famous in the first place and embrace it without any excuses.

Until I saw Tangled, I had no idea how much I had missed the old-fashioned Disney storytelling style. Tangled is an almost-great work. Beautiful to behold, fun to watch, uplifting and exciting. This is the first time that I have seen Walt Disney Animation use CGI in a way that meshes well with their-hand animated films; it’s definitely the best non-Pixar CGI film they have ever released. (What, better than Chicken Little? Yes, I dare say.)

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A Review of Deep Secret

A Review of Deep Secret

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deeep-secretDeep Secret, by Diana Wynne Jones
Tor Books (383 pages, hardcover, March 1999)

Diana Wynne Jones was born August 16, 1934 and died on March 26, 2011. Various writers who knew her have made some excellent biographical posts; I especially recommend stopping by Neil Gaiman’s blog. I never met Ms. Jones myself, but I’ve been a fan of her work since I stumbled upon Howl’s Moving Castle as a teenager. Because of that, I thought perhaps I should review one of her novels this week; preferably something other than Howl’s Moving Castle, which is quite well-known.

Deep Secret is a typical Jones book: it’s complicated. Rupert Venables, junior Magid for Earth, has a number of problems which all seem to converge on him at once. The empire at the center of the multiverse is falling. The late emperor was a paranoid, unpleasant man who hid his heirs and executed them if they discovered their own identities. He also worshipped an evil thornbush goddess. Rupert’s mentor has died, and he has to find a replacement Magid and he hates the most likely candidate on sight. When he decides to simplify matters by gathering all the candidates at a speculative fiction convention, his very odd neighbor wanders through his spell and becomes wrapped up in it. Also, his mentor is now haunting his car and won’t stop playing baroque music.

Maree Mallory, most likely candidate for Magid, has her own set of troubles, albeit more mundane ones. She’s had a bad breakup, she’s broke and living with relatives who dislike her — all except her younger cousin Nick, who she finds charming but slightly amoral. She keeps having dreams about a horrible and insulting old lady who is somehow also a thornbush. And she keeps encountering a person she thinks of as The Prat, also known as Rupert Venables.

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The Hobbit: The 1977 Animated Television Movie

The Hobbit: The 1977 Animated Television Movie

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hobbit-77-opening-shot1The Hobbit (NBC TV, 1977)
Directed by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr. Featuring the Voices of John Huston, Orson Bean, Hans Conried, Richard Boone, Theodore Gottlieb, Otto Preminger, Cyril Ritchard, Paul Frees, Don Messick.

A few years ago, in my early posting days on Black Gate, I wrote a lengthy overview of Rankin/Bass’s strange but oddly likable animated television movie of The Return of the King. I intended to review Rankin/Bass’s other Tolkien TV movie, The Hobbit, some time later. “Later” took the form of two years, give or take a day, but has become “now,” thanks to Peter Jackson.

With The Hobbit back in the front lines of entertainment news because of the start — finally! — of production on Peter Jackson’s two-movie adaptation of the book, it’s the appropriate time to re-visit the first film version of the story. A Long Expected Party for an old friend.

Full disclosure: I have an enormous nostalgic fondness for the 1977 animated Hobbit, since it introduced me to one of my favorite authors at a young age. This movie was my first exposure to anything related to J. R. R. Tolkien when I saw it at age five on its second network broadcast. I already adored monsters of any kind, branching off from a natural adoration of dinosaurs, and my mother told me that The Hobbit was a book chock-a-block full of strange beasts: goblins, trolls, dragons, giant spiders, giant eagles. Since I was still too young to read the book, I took up the movie as my Middle Earth introduction and loved every minute of it. When I read the book myself for the first time three years later, it was in a coffee table edition that used stills and production art from the Rankin/Bass production to illustrate Tolkien’s text. The combination of the TV broadcast and this edition of the book have made the Rankin/Bass movie an inseparable part of my Tolkien experience.

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I Am Number Four: Why Movies Are Rarely As Good As Books

I Am Number Four: Why Movies Are Rarely As Good As Books

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i-am-number-fourI am in my mid-thirties and my wife is in her mid-twenties. The eight-year difference between us can be jarring at times, especially because I am a pop culture junkie and she grew up without cable television (and rarely watched the network television she did have access to, as I learned when I discovered she’d never seen an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard, even in rerun).

Recently, this generation gap has became particularly evident. A close friend of hers has formed a book club, of which I am the only male attendee and also about the only thirty-something. As such, the books that we’re reading tend to track toward chick lit, much of it in the Twilight-like realm of paranormal, horror, or fantasy-related romance novels, many targeted toward young adults.

Some of the books that fall into this category these days are truly outstanding, such as The Hunger Games, but many of them have serious issues … which brings us to last month’s book, chosen in part to coincide with the release of its film version: I Am Number Four.

I Am Number Four: The Premise

As the planet Lorien was being destroyed by a race known as the Mogadorians, a group of Loriens came up with a plan that would have put Jor-El to shame. They cram 9 of their young on a spaceship to Earth, along with 9 mentors. The Lorien youth are of a class known as the Garde, who will eventually develop powers, called Legacies, intended to defend Lorien. The mentors are part of the class known as Cepan, who help train the Garde.

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