GeekReads

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I purchased Stories of Your Life and Others based on a recommendation on a discussion forum, which in hindsight was an odd thing for me to do since I’ve been burned by random internet recommendations before. However, that recommendation came from Amazon.com reviews; this one came from the geeks on the Ars Technica OpenForum, and I should know better than to doubt those guys.

Stories is an amazing compilation of Ted Chiang’s work. He’s probably the most famous science fiction author you’ve never heard of – well, I’d never heard of him before anyway. He only writes short stories, and since his first was published in 1990, he has only written 13 in total (spread out quite evenly across two-and-a-bit decades). The man has won more awards than the number of pieces he’s written, and not just crappy unknown ones either – Hugo and Nebula awards.

Although it’s pitched as sci-fi, it fits uncomfortably with the popular notion of the genre as stories about technology and/or the future. The short stories in this book would be more accurately described as “high-level dreaming” (Wikipedia puts them into the rather unhelpful category of “speculative fiction”).

Themes range from the religious (buidling the biblical Tower of Babel) through socio-political (a drug that allows people to “turn off” the part of the brain that perceives and creates bias towards beauty), to things that people do normally associate with SF (aliens, maths, automata), but his treatment of these topics is unlike anything I’ve ever read before.

Two things that I greatly admire about Chiang are:

• how very far he goes in imagining the worlds that creates, often taking your breath away with the dizzying heights of his imagination, and
• the brevity of words – he writes extremely lucidly and communicates complex topics with an efficiency of words and depth of emotion that reminds me of Ursula Le Guin.

Stories of Your Life and Others is both the last book I finished in 2011 and also the best one, and I hope that through this first GeekReads book review of 2012, more people will be introduced to this great author.

Bot, babe and boofhead. What more could one ask for in a movie?

Can you believe that this is my first Transformers movie review on Geekreads? With Transformers: Dark of the Moon, we’ve finally come to the end of Michael Bay’s movie trilogy, and let me say that it’s been a rough ride for this Transformers fan. It’s been quite the ordeal being asked by fellow Transformers fans whether I enjoyed seeing Michael Bay repeatedly rape my childhood, because secretly, I enjoyed the movies.

I realise the litany of offenses against the source material is epic, but if the huge box office success of all three movies is anything to go by, Bay could be forgiven for the fact that he has helped to cement Transformers in the minds and imaginations of a whole new generation, keeping the franchise alive unlike many other cartoons that are still lurking in the shadows waiting for the possibility of a reboot (or have already tried, and failed).

Having said that, it’s not all roses. Dark of the Moon, like its predecessors, is no masterpiece (although apparently it does demonstrate some advanced movie-making techniques, for those interested in the cinematic arts). Whatever merits it might otherwise have, the movie is sorely let down by:

• Bad concept: this isn’t really a Transformers movie, it’s an alien invasion movie featuring Transformers characters.
• Bad writing: the characters are not only inconsistent with the Transformers “lore” (as established in the original cartoons and comics), they’re inconsistent within and between the movies. For example, Optimus Prime goes from being a compassionate, courageous leader, to a ruthless, merciless killer without rhyme or reason.
• Tight budgeting: the scenes designed to minimise the use of CGI were so very, painfully obvious, e.g. how the Wreckers never appeared in anything but their “bristling with weapons” vehicle mode; they’re never seen to transform.
• Pernicious product placement: among the worst I’ve seen in recent times. From the glaring “Lenovo” logos on all the screens to the photocopier with a ream of Double A paper resting on it a la this old TV ad – it made the movie seem like one long ad.

But surely, the monstrous box office takings must mean that they did something right? Personally, I think these things might have been:

• Making the action scenes visually intelligible: a big problem with the previous movies (particularly Revenge of the Fallen) was that the robot fights looked like a giant machine vomiting jagged metal parts onto the screen. Giving each of the robots distinctive colours instead of the various shades of silver and grey, and the liberal use of slow-mo, made it possible to comprehend the fight choreography.
• Having “something for everybody”: yeah, the fans will argue that the humans in the story are superfluous, but unfortunately the rest of the cinema-going public would largely disagree. Covering all bases with the eye candy, toilet humour, conspiracy theories, etc. means that nobody is entirely bored and unentertained for the whole duration of the movie – whether you brought your partner, kids, parents or friends. Heck, even Margaret Pomeranz (of At The Movies) had kind words for the first half hour dealing with the moon landing.

You can’t please everybody, and I believe Michael Bay made the right decision by NOT pandering to the hardcore fans. Yes, the movies could’ve been better with consistent storylines and faithful characterisations, but then I’m afraid that the approval of the geeks would have kept others at Bay *tish boom*.

Models – of the enthusiast hobby kind as opposed to the category of human coathangers – are a useful analogy for discussing Super 8. Just as gluing together molded plastic parts creates an aesthetically pleasing replica of an ideal form, director J. J. Abrams has taken a bunch of old plot elements to create a very pleasant pastiche.

You’ve seen bits of this movie elsewhere. The Roswell/Area 51 alien conspiracy themes appear in more movies than I can name, and there’s a strong echo of The Goonies and Tomorrow, When The War Began where you’ve got a bunch of ordinary kids trying to grapple with everyday issues (love, identity, etc.) around extraordinary circumstances. But the “mystery monster” aspect in the promotion of this flick gives me the sense that Abrams is trying to make good on the poorly rated Cloverfield.

Happily, he delivers. Super 8 is very enjoyable, and the charm of the kids making their own zombie home movie spills over into the rest of the actual movie. The characters are very likeable and well cast, and the adults mostly stay out of the way to let the kids shine.

The script tackles a lot of themes so the story does get somewhat messy: a bunch of kids trying to make a zombie movie; father-son dealing with grief from losing their wife/mother; strange things happening all over town; two kids falling in love – but Abrams manages to hold them all together without, ahem, losing the plot.

It’s a fun “comfort movie” that Jenny and I will probably come back to over and over again (when we get it on Blu-ray).

This poster should be in the running (ha ha) for a "most inaccurate representation" prize

Source Code is the second feature from Duncan Jones, director of the sci-fi thriller Moon. His first movie was shot on a modest budget of $5 million, and while this cost an estimated $30 million more, retains somewhat of a “shot on a budget” feel about it – which is not a bad thing in Jones’ hands. With an interesting premise dealing with trying to change the events of the past, Jones cleverly uses the same sets over and over again to great effect, creating a kind of cinematic claustrophobia that matches how boxed in his character feels.

The story is this: a terrorist detonates a bomb on a passenger train, and announces that a second, more devastating bomb will be set off soon after. A special scientific enterprise attempts to uncover the perpetrator through a cutting-edge technique that allows Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) to access the past through the memory of one of the victims on the train. But because the brain only retains 8 minutes of information, that is the time window Stevens has to uncover the truth – revisiting the same period over and over again. But as the captain uncovers details of about the terrorist plot, he also uncovers some disturbing information about himself.

Time travel stories always abound with problems, and Source Code requires a heightened suspension of disbelief in order to buy into the conceit: e.g. how does the victim’s memories contain an entire reality for Captain Stevens to interact with? Fortunately Jones had the sense to ensure that none of these were critical to the main plot, so they’re easily dispensed with, leaving a compelling character-driven story that dares to appeal to the intellect and ask complex moral questions.

Long story short: I had a wad of off-peak movie tickets to burn before the end of the month, so I’ve seen more movies in March than I’ve had time to blog about (been busy gardening :-P) Jenny, who’s a huge movie buff, couldn’t be happier. Meanwhile I’m stressing about the huge backlog of posts… so here’s a quick sci-fi round-up to bring myself up to speed, featuring I Am Number Four, The Adjustment Bureau, and Limitless.

I Am Number Four

It's Justin Timberlake with Iron Man hands!

Let’s get the painful stuff over with first: this movie makes no pretence of the fact that it’s a cheap cash-in, remixing various popular sources (Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Iron Man, et al.) into a new franchise. It doesn’t try to hide the fact that there will be sequels, baking future-pointing elements into the plot, but having suffered through The Last Airbender I consider this a small mercy.

The film is set in the familiar sci-fi/fantasy story breeding ground of the American high school. The writers didn’t try to tie in the protagonist’s discovery of super powers with a coming-of-age puberty metaphor, and yet I found that oddly discomforting – a narrative no-man’s-land where the characters are too old for a younger audience and too young for an older audience to relate to.

A paint-by-numbers franchise (literally!) that might be named for its affinity to Vietnamese restaurant menus: not number 1, Pho tai (rare beef noodle soup), but the one further down the list with the extra stuff which is alright if you like that sort of thing (brisket, tripe, tendon balls, etc.), but not quite as good as the original.

The Adjustment Bureau

Is it just me or has Emily Blunt been Photoshopped beyond recognition in this poster?

The Adjustment Bureau is loosely based on a short story written by Phillip K. Dick, called Adjustment Team. By his own admission, Dick wasn’t very good at writing titles and his stories have a tendency of being bestowed with new titles when they’re filmed: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? became Bladerunner, and We Can Remember It for You Wholesale became Total Recall. Then again, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly and Paycheck all made it through unscathed.

A few weeks ago I read a really excellent essay of his called How To Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later. There, he philosophises about the nature of reality, drawing deeply from the Christian faith and the Bible. Adjustment Bureau never explicitly talks religion, but it’s very much like that essay and is probably true to the source material in that sense – fans’ protests about it being turned into a love story notwithstanding. Due to a mistake by one of the members of the Bureau, politician David Norris (Matt Damon) accidentally gets a peek under the surface of his perceived reality, revealing a religious subtext – a “divine plan” in which he is forbidden to pursue a relationship with Elise (Emily Blunt), a wild spirit whom he meets and falls in love with after suffering a crushing election defeat.

Despite being intellectually engaged by the premise, about halfway through I noticed Emily Blunt’s cleft chin, and it ended up bothering me throughout the rest of the movie.

A great movie to see with friends (or on a date), for its discussion topic potential.

Limitless

One thing that clearly isn't limitless: the poster designer's imagination

Yet again I find myself at odds with Hollywood values. On one hand Limitless avoids being yet-another-morality-tale ramming the value of one’s true (unaided) potential down our throats, but then on the other what does result is a story where using drugs, taking shortcuts and screwing over other people leads to success. Hmmm…

Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) is a struggling writer who stumbles across his ex-wife’s drug dealer brother – ostensibly cleaned up and working for a pharmaceutical company testing a new miracle drug that lets people use the 80% of untapped potential in their brains (this is a myth, btw). After taking the sample that he gets given, Morra tears through a huge chunk of writing in a matter of hours. When he goes back for more, he finds his source murdered, but discovers a hidden stash of the drug and gets himself into way more than he bargained for.

Logic was never going to be a strong point in the conceit of having somebody become a super-genius, and if you think about it too much beforehand your brain would fill up with “if he’s so smart why didn’t he just…?” type questions before the movie even starts. Suffice to say: just go with it.