In beginning, Josh think it funny to write review of book Bigfoot: I Not Dead using Bigfoot style of writing. However, realize will get annoying fast and not want annoy readers. So will stop.
While I was on vacation recently, a friend of mine gave me a copy of Graham Roumieu’s third Bigfoot book, Bigfoot: I Not Dead. At first blush, it looks like a kids’ book; it’s full of illustrations and the text is artfully hand-written. It’s also a very slim volume. But she and her husband both said it was hilarious, and it’s quite short, so I figured, why not?
After reading the book, I can say that I should find it funnier than I actually do. The style of humor is supposed to be right up my alley — Bigfoot is written as a self-deprecating, lonely guy who just wants to be understood, but occasionally gets angry about his life or the state of the world. I did laugh a few times, but mostly I just found it generally amusing in the way one finds the comedy club emcee’s jokes generally amusing.
As the book is so short, it doesn’t really justify one of my usual 1000-word reviews, but I do want to call attention to some of my favorite bits, including:
“Me look awesome on camera.”
A reference to the lore of consuming someone’s brain and gaining their knowledge.
Bigfoot’s bitching about his neighbor.
“The Question” about Bigfoot’s big feet.
“Never let them see you earwax.”
As for the pictures: I don’t really know how to review, critique, or even react to artwork*, but I’ll give it a shot, since after all this book is illustrated: the artwork is good, and appropriately primitive-looking — after all, Bigfoot is ostensibly the writer of this book. The pictures really fit well with the narrative. The ones containing blood aren’t quite as good, I think, perhaps because that part of the narrative gets away from Bigfoot’s “trying to fit in as a person” dialogue in favor of his “I’m a giant forest creature who can bash your head in with one blow” dialogue, but overall it works quite well.
Bigfoot: I Not Dead retails for $15 USD, according to the UPC on the back. I don’t think I could pay that much for a book this short, and I’m glad it was a gift. However, I do think the book is funny enough to be worth reading, especially if you enjoy juvenile humor and/or retellings of the lives of mythic creatures. If you can find it in the library, or you’re one of those “go into the bookstore, sit on the couch, and read a book” people, why not grab all three Bigfoot books? Most folks should be able to read them all in one sitting.
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Note to Parents: This is not a book for young children, despite its appearance, size, and font. It contains violence, adult language, and discussions of sex. I’d say it’s PG-13 at worst, though. Of course, you should use your own discretion when it comes to your children.
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*My grandfather, now that he’s retired, has taken up art — he paints, carves wood into really amazing carnival horses (especially for someone suffering from Parkinson’s in his dominant hand), and he’s learning to play the piano. When we visited his house during Thanksgiving weekend, he showed me everything he had made and was currently working on. I tried to make the appropriate appreciative noises, but I felt like I was being repetitive. I’m certainly proud of him, and I often talk about his work when grandparents come up in conversation, but when it comes to actually reacting to artwork for the sake of artwork, I often have difficulty. I suppose members of my family who don’t read genre fiction but are forced to read my writing are the same way.
I think most people can agree that the assassination of JFK on November 22, 1963 was a watershed event in human history. It led to Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement, and possibly a prolonged Cold War*. Had he not been shot in Dallas on that day, perhaps Vietnam might not have happened, or at least been smaller in scope. Perhaps the Civil Rights movement might have unfolded differently. Perhaps the Cold War would’ve escalated into a full-blown nuclear conflict between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.
There’s really no way to know what would’ve happened, other than via alternate historical fiction. Which is exactly what Stephen King’s latest novel, 11/22/63, is all about.
11/22/63 takes place in both 2011 and the late 50s/early 60s. In 2011, high school English teacher (and all-around tall dude) Jake Epping is contacted by his friend, diner owner Al Templeton. Al knows he’s in the end stages of cancer, but he doesn’t want to die before showing Jake the secret of his diner: a rabbit hole in his stockroom that leads to September 9, 1958. Jake takes a quick trip, enjoys a root beer, and then returns to Al’s diner. Only two minutes have passed in the real world — only two minutes ever pass in the real world, no matter how long someone stays down the rabbit hole.
That’s when Al drops the bomb on him: for the past four years, he’s been living in the hole, trying to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from killing President Kennedy on November 22, 1963. He’s amassed a notebook full of research, one that he can no longer use because he knows he has very little time left. So Al implores Jake to take on the mission.
Jake, meanwhile, has plans of his own for the rabbit hole. On October 31, 1958, the father of one of his adult education students back in 2011 murdered an entire family, and Jake wants to set it right. That’s when he learns that the past is obdurate — it doesn’t want to be changed. It’ll throw up obstacles to try and stop anyone who does. And if it’s this hard to save one family — a minor part of the tapestry of history — how hard is it going to be to save the leader of the free world five years later?
In general, I’ve enjoyed what Stephen King novels I’ve read, with the exception of The Regulators and Desperation, which I think I may have been too young (at the time) to get the full experience out of. King has written the only book I’m too scared to read again — The Sun Dog, about a Polaroid camera that takes photos of a dog about to attack, and nothing else — and, clearly, he knows his craft well enough to keep putting out bestsellers that are later adapted into TV shows and films. I did enjoy 11/22/63, despite its slow start; clearly the novel was exhaustively researched, and although it does have the requisite Maine scenes, there are a lot of other set-pieces across the eastern half of the U.S. as well. In the past, Jake travels to two towns in Maine, along the eastern seaboard, southwest Florida, and finally to Texas where Oswald is going to shoot Kennedy.
But the book isn’t just about that. Even if Jake does have a mission which will end on November 22, 1963, when he — he hopes — stops Oswald from committing murder, he can’t spend the entire intervening time just doing nothing. I mean, I get bored on a Sunday afternoon if there’s no football on TV, and that’s in 2011 when there’s plenty of other things to do. Eventually, after setting right some wrongs, Jake settles in a small town in Texas — the first truly-friendly place he’s found since coming to the past — and takes up his old mantle as an English teacher.
That, I think, is where the story starts to get good. It more-or-less ceases to be about Oswald and starts being about Jake, and how he conducts his life in the past. And what he learns is that, be it 1961 or 2011, life still goes on. People go to school, go to work, and fall in love, just like in his own time.
On Star Trek, time travel is often used to right a wrong or fix a mistake, or even just to do research into the past. The thing about Star Trek is that, at the end of the episode (or movie), everything wraps up in a neat little bow. Lieutenant Christopher is returned to his fighter jet, the whales save earth, Captain Sisko isn’t killed in an engineering accident, and Harry doesn’t miscalculate and kill the entire Voyager crew. 11/22/63 shows us that that’s not exactly the case — which, I suppose, is what happens with a lot of alternate history and time travel fiction. King reminds us often that the past does not want to be changed, and it will fight any way it can.
And it fights Jake pretty hard, even going so far as to exact revenge upon him for what he does.
I found 11/22/63 to be somewhat of a departure from the King fiction I’ve read in the past — there are no monsters, no supernatural forces, no blood-showers at prom**. Just a rabbit hole in the stock-room of a diner that, when you walk through it, takes you to September 9, 1958 and allows you to change history. The rest of the novel is almost pure historical fiction — a man of today experiencing the past first-hand. It speaks to King’s exhaustive research on the subject, as well as his storytelling skill, that someone like me (whose favorite era of American history is 1875-1930) can pick it up and become immersed in it almost immediately — it’s believable, relatable, and damn interesting.
According to Wikipedia, 11/22/63 was released at the beginning of November 2011 and quickly became a bestseller. I can certainly see why. It’s a doorstop all right, but it’s a doorstop you won’t want to put down. I definitely recommend it.
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Note to Parents: This is a Stephen King novel. It contains explicit sex and explicit violence, as well as adult language. I don’t think the sex is anything today’s older teens can’t handle, but as for the violence… just remember that King has been doing this for a long time and, unlike in an R-rated film with a fight sequence, King is fond of taking away all hope a character has of escaping unscathed… and then having someone beat the crap out of him. Keep that in mind. Of course, you should use your own discretion when it comes to your children.
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*I wasn’t a history major, but according to the book, JFK was trying to end the Cold War.
**That’s what happens in Carrie, right? I’ve never read it, or seen the film. Sorry.
Some years ago, while lamenting Atlanta’s rush-hour traffic and the gas crisis, I wrote a blog post entitled “You Pay With Time”. Apparently I wasn’t the only person who had that idea, because Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, The Truman Show) just wrote, produced, and directed a new film where you literally do just that.
In Time takes place around 200 years in the future — possibly more; they weren’t specific. Humanity has been genetically engineered to stop aging at 25, at which point every person is given one year to live. They can then spend that time however they want — and they have to, because everything from food to rent to transit is paid for in the currency of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years. Into the ghetto of this world — District 12 — is born Will Salas (Justin Timberlake, Black Snake Moan), a young man who wants nothing more than to help his mother (Olivia Wilde, House) and his friends (including Roseanne‘s Johnny Galecki, also known as Darlene’s boyfriend).
But, as with many sci-fi dystopian films and novels that start in the ghetto, the whole point is to upset the status quo. Will does just that, taking on the entirety of District 4 (where the rich people live) and gaining the attention of socialite Sylvia Weis (Amanda Seyfried, Veronica Mars). Unfortunately, he also catches the eye of Timekeeper Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy, Batman Begins), who wants to know just how Will got his hands on enough time to move in the circles of the rich and powerful. Soon enough, Leon has used his power to send Will back to the ghetto, where he and Sylvia must work together to take down District 4, as well as save enough time to live until tomorrow.
The concept of In Time isn’t particularly new, and the writing is often heavy-handed — there’s a lot of comparisons drawn to the rich/poor divide facing much of the world today, and a lot of messaging that bludgeons the audience — the very people who can afford the money and time to sit down and watch a two-hour movie about people who have no time to spend. Matt Bomer (White Collar) first brings it to Will’s attention as a rich man who’s grown tired of immortality — the very goal toward which so many people strive. Once Will gets to District 4, he does exactly what most have-nots would do when they find a wallet with $10,000 (or, in the film, 100 years) in it: gets a hotel suite, sleeps in, and eats an expensive breakfast. But Will isn’t stupid; he knows he’ll need more time if he’s going to make a change in the world, and he immediately starts stockpiling more and more time.
Once Will is expelled from District 4, we get into a lot of car chases, footraces, gunfights, and the occasional intimate scene between Will and Sylvia. But even then, there’s a lot of obvious plot couponing and a deus ex machina before the grand finale.
Other than the way he looks when he’s pretending to be sad, Justin Timberlake’s acting is pretty good; he does a decent job playing the “poor but community-minded” guy we’ve seen in many a dystopian world, and he seems to genuinely care about his mother* and the people around him. He also does well when he gets to District 4 as “poor kid makes good but it still suspicious of everyone and everything” guy. He’s not the best actor in the film, but I think he was a good choice for the role.
Amanda Seyfried, on the other hand, always seems to look like either a sex kitten or like she was just used as the clapper in an enormous bell. Her hair is too perfect, and her eyes are always wide and glassy. I’ve seen her in a few roles and I think she’s an okay actress, but I didn’t really like her in the role. I did like Olivia Wilde — despite the fact that she didn’t seem so much like a 60-year-old woman in a 25-year-old’s body — and I also thought the supporting cast did well.
The main villains of the piece are Felipe Weis (Vincent Kartheiser, Mad Men) and Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy). Weis (Sylvia’s father) is your stereotypical “I can buy anything because I’m so darn rich” villain, and he doesn’t even really stand up to an average Bond adversary in terms of threat. He really just exists to be a pastiche of the rich corporate people that the film is standing against. And Leon, like Agent Smith in The Matrix, just wants to keep things running the way they are — at any expense. While Kartheiser isn’t given much to do — Weis really never seems to be in danger at any point in the film — Murphy manages to play his scenes with his usual aloof aplomb. The writing for his character isn’t great — and his demise is pretty lame, as he is hoist on** his own petard.
The production design and costuming of the film is pretty standard for a near-future dystopia (just slight advancements and changes in the current styles and architecture), and the soundtrack wasn’t anything notable beyond a subtle ticking clock effect in the background of most of the scenes.
Overall I found In Time to be an enjoyable film, and worth the price of admission at just under two hours. I was a tad disappointed that we had to sit through a preview for Jonah Hill’s updated version of Adventures in Babysitting, but the film quickly made me forget about it. If you haven’t seen it yet, wait for it to get to the cheap theater or DVD, unless you absolutely need to see Justin Timberlake running or Amanda Seyfried running or Olivia Wilde running or… well… you get the idea.
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Note to Parents: This is a standard PG-13 film, which means light-to-moderate swearing, lots of violence, and the occasional piece of women’s underwear (with the woman inside it). If you would take your kids to see any of the Bond films from the past 20 years, this film should be okay too. Of course, you should use your own discretion when it comes to your children.
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*And if I might devolve into something a little less highbrow for a moment — there’s a scene in the film that shows off Olivia Wilde’s legs as she runs, and, to be honest, they are amazing. Very athletic-looking. Although I guess that, if you have to run everywhere because you’re living day-to-day, you stay in pretty good shape.
When Star Trek: Voyager first aired in Orlando, where I was living during most of its run, it was on the local UPN affiliate, which also was the flagship television station for the Orlando Magic. As a result, I missed a lot of episodes, especially starting in 1996 (season three). Now, thanks to Netflix, I’m catching up on them, watching one or two a night before I go to bed.
I’ve just gotten to Season Four, which is when Seven of Nine joins the crew. And, at the time of this writing, I’ve just watched “The Gift”, episode two of that season and Jennifer Lien’s final appearance as a series regular. (She played Kes, in case the name is unfamiliar.)
I remember seeing “The Gift” in 1997 and thinking, “wow, that was a pretty decent episode. Janeway stuck to her guns and saved this woman from life as a Borg, who had brainwashed her into thinking she belonged with them. I can totally draw parallels to other fiction I have read/seen/enjoyed.”
Yeah. Fourteen years later, not so much.
To recap, “The Gift” begins shortly after Voyager and the Borg work together to defeat Species 8472, who are so powerful and so alien that even the Borg cannot assimilate them. At the end of the previous episode, the Borg liaison, Seven of Nine, attempted to assimilate the ship and crew, but was stopped thanks to a little foresight on the part of Janeway and company. They disconnected her from the Borg and planned to rehabilitate her as a human.
Seven of Nine, still a Borg.
The problem is this: Seven doesn’t want to be human. She wants to be a Borg. It’s all she’s ever known.
My 1997 self watched Janeway try to break through Seven’s shell and convince her that the Borg had damaged her, taken her away from her humanity and turned her into something she should never have been. I thought it was a noble effort, and at the end, during the “let’s show off the sexy new crewmember” scene, I figured that Janeway had broken through to Seven and convinced her she should be a human now.
And everyone goes home happy.
But my 2011 self doesn’t see it that way.
Throughout the entire episode, Seven made it very clear that she was a Borg, that she wanted to remain a Borg, and that she wanted to be returned to her people — the Borg, not humanity.
Janeway pretty much ignored that at every turn.
In Act One, when Seven is woken up to be told that her human immune systems are going to make her body reject her Borg implants, she tells Janeway she wants a subspace transceiver (probably something they can replicate quickly) and to be left on a habitable planet to await pickup by her people. Janeway, despite Seven’s loud and very clear protestations, says no.
Act Two is mostly about Kes’s growing telepathic abilities*, but is notable for Janeway saying that she believes Seven isn’t capable of making rational decisions for herself, so as ship’s captain Janeway is going to do it. Very alarming, and the expression on Janeway’s face echoes some of the expressions I’ve seen on television talking heads claiming that they want to remove choice to protect a group they don’t think can protect themselves. Case in point: the “opt-in to see adult websites” list coming soon to the U.K.. I was quite disturbed at this whole exchange, and the fact that the Doctor — a technological being himself, albeit one who Janeway continues to fight for the existence of — didn’t say anything. I could tell from his face that he wanted to, and Robert Picardo played the scene wonderfully.
Seven regards her newly-human parts.
In Act Three, Seven wakes up from surgery to find that she’s becoming more human, and that the Doctor has performed medical procedures to make sure this doesn’t kill her. She argues with Janeway, who again disregards Seven’s desire to remain a Borg and to return to her people, and then agrees to help Voyager remove some of the Borg technology she installed because… well… she’s stuck here.
But then she sees a subspace transceiver in a Jefferies Tube and makes an attempt to escape what, to her, is an untenable situation. She doesn’t try to destroy the ship; she doesn’t try to assimilate anyone. All she does is try to signal her people so they can rescue her from captivity — and how many episodes of Voyager did that happen in over the past three years? Kes’s new telepathic abilities assist the crew in stopping Seven, and the Borg is sent to the brig.
Act Four, however, is the worst of it. Seven is now in the brig, and Janeway tells her she’s met other Borg who were de-assimilated, and they all came to accept their new situation. She does make reference to the fact that Seven was assimilated while still a child, so she doesn’t have as many memories of being a human. Seven considers Janeway’s argument and, once again, says she would rather remain a Borg, that she doesn’t wish to become human, and that Janeway herself is removing from Seven the fundamental right of choosing her own destiny.
In Act Five, one really hopes that Janeway gets the idea. Seven — a Borg, a member of a species who isn’t supposed to show emotion, who is programmed not to show emotion — actually breaks down in tears and expresses her distaste at being forced to live as an individual, without the voices of the collective. Now, remember, only a few episodes ago Chakotay worked with some ex-Borg who formed their own collective and used it to serve the greater good — including saving his life. He knows what it feels like to be part of a group like that, and how beneficial it can be. But even he doesn’t stand up to Janeway and make her at least consider that she’s making a mistake. No, all that happens is we set up this series’s Picard/Data dynamic: Janeway tutoring Seven in humanity, the source of many, many heavy-handed episodes to come.
Finally, in Act Six, as I said earlier, we end up seeing that Seven has come to terms with being a human. So, in the end, Janeway’s actions — which today I see at the very least as being misguided and at worst reprehensible (I believe all people should have a choice, as long as they harm no one else in making that choice) — turn out to be “right”. I did feel like another scene, where Seven maybe decompresses with the Doctor while getting her new eye put in or something, would’ve been very helpful in bridging the gap from tearful Borg to stoic-and-somewhat-willing human. Oh well. Janeway gets away with it again, and we warp on home.
It’s amazing just how much 14 years can change a person’s impression of a piece of art. What was a noble gesture in 1997 is now something to be viewed with suspicion, and it’s going to color every interaction Janeway has with Seven over the rest of the series. I realize that, over time, Seven comes to accept her humanity, and I realize that the chord being struck was supposed to be “kidnapped child is raised by the ‘evil’ parents, comes to love them, and is returned to her ‘real’ parents but doesn’t want to go because she loves the ‘evil’ ones”. It’s just… Seven wasn’t a child when she was turned back into a human. She was in her twenties. She had the ability to make the choice for herself.
She chose Borg. Janeway took her choice away. Not an action worthy of Star Trek, I should think.
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*I was also not very impressed with the way Kes suddenly jumped in power from “some telepathic stuff” to “uber-telepathic being”. That should’ve been handled more smoothly, and over a somewhat-longer arc. As with the Seven storyline, it felt like there was a big jump in the middle. And Jennifer Lien’s 80s hair did not help matters much — she was much more believable with the short hair than the feathered ‘do.
The following review contains spoilers for any number of previous Discworld novels.
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Every cop show has an obligatory “get stuck doing cop stuff while on vacation”. This apparently happens on the Discworld as well, because, in Terry Pratchett’s latest novel, Snuff, Commander Sir Duke Blackboard Monitor Samuel Vimes goes on vacation and ends up uncovering a pretty huge crime.
Snuff occurs about three years after Thud, the last City Watch-centric novel. Vimes’s son Sam (referred to herein as “Young Sam”, as per the book) is now six years old and, like all six-year-olds, is obsessed with poo. A trip to the Ramkin (Vimes’s wife comes from an absurdly rich family) estate, which is in the general vicinity of Quirm (think Paris), should afford Vimes and Lady Sybil a nice vacation, and will also give Young Sam the opportunity to examine many new varieties of poo. Also joining them is Willikins, Vimes’s personal butler/batman, who we’ve learned from previous books is not quite as pressed and proper as one might think.
The first third of the book is, in my opinion, the best of it. There’s a lot of rather typical Vimes-out-of-water moments, a lot of funny stuff with Young Sam and poo, and some good lines for Willikins as he takes on the role of Mr. Exposition (Willikins has been with the Ramkin family for many years). But, as is wont to happen with policeman-on-vacation stories, Vimes stumbles onto several crimes, including a murder, smuggling, and slavery. Without the support of any Watchmen from back in Ankh-Morpork, Vimes must figure out what’s going on, unravel both the low crimes and the high crimes, and not actually break the law in the process.
And, just in case you were worried, we also get a touch of Vetinari; some scenes with Carrot, Angua, Cheery, A.E. Pessimal, Fred, Nobby, and Constable Haddock; and even a Nac Mac Feegle in the form of Constable Wee Mad Arthur.
One of the major points of Snuff is to bring to light the plight of the goblins, a race of beings thought to be the lowest of the low. But, as with most races like that in Discworld (starting with the trolls, way back in The Light Fantastic), Vimes discovers that there’s a lot more to goblins than he — or anyone else — thought. And once he learns this, he becomes quite put-out that someone is transporting and enslaving the goblins to harvest tobacco in a far-off land. When Vimes gets put-out, things get done.
The second act of Snuff is stuff we’ve done before — Vimes training up a new constable (Guards! Guards!), Vimes investigating crimes against a race previously thought to be unworthy (Feet of Clay), Vimes using his cunning and experience to overcome the odds (The Fifth Elephant), and Vimes subverting the status quo in ways that shouldn’t work, but somehow do anyway (Jingo). It’s still funny and interesting, but it’s not new. Act Three is the obligatory “chase the bad guy” sequence, and a lot of action occurs. I won’t spoil it for you, except to say that the word “damn” is used a lot.
As I said before, Act One really is the best part of the book, because we’re being reintroduced to characters we haven’t spent a lot of time with since 2005’s Thud. Plus, at that point the story is simple: Vimes is going on vacation with his son. Once we get into Act Two, we get a lot of the same old Vimes-isms we’ve been getting since 1996’s Feet of Clay. I also thought the story started to get a little muddled at that point, and a little too overcomplicated.
Terry Pratchett, as is widely known, suffers from posterior cortical atrophy, a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer’s that affects his motor skills but not his mental faculties. As a result, he must write via dictation, either to his assistant or to a computer. I’m not a professional writer*, but I do know that I have a much more difficult time writing if I try to dictate a story than if I actually type or write it. My guess is that Pratchett has overcome this issue, although it seems to me that the tone of the books has changed slightly, become more urgent.
In 2009’s Unseen Academicals I observed a lot of the same type of plot overcomplications as in Snuff and noted in my review of I Shall Wear Midnight — Pratchett’s previous novel — that it felt as though he was trying to shoehorn in all the ideas he’s wanted to address in future Discworld books but feared he would be unable to do due to his illness. I didn’t observe quite as much of that in Snuff, but there was still attention paid to things that I thought took away from the story. Examples include Vetinari finally finding out who writes the Times crossword puzzles, Lady Sybil using her influence to make a change in the world, and Willikins revealing to the audience what Vimes already knows: that he’s much more than your average batman**. These are all subtopics that really could have their own book, or at least their own primary subplot, but they seemed unnecessary — although certainly well-written and well-integrated into the plot of Snuff.
And that brings me to my final problem with the novel: the title. Snuff means many things, including:
Kill, as in a snuff film.
Un-light, as in snuffing out a candle.
A form of tobacco.
Some of these things did happen in the book, but I’ve got to think there was a better title out there somewhere. Snuff just… didn’t fit. Not to me.
Despite all of these concerns, I don’t want you to think that Snuff isn’t a good book, because it most definitely is. Pratchett’s customary humor and wit are present throughout, and the writing remains as wonderful as ever. My inner 12-year-old appreciated all the poo references, and if we’ve already done the goblin thing back when Vimes visited the Low King, at least it’s done well again. Snuff isn’t going to make the list of my favorite Discworld novels***, but I certainly enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next one.
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Note to Parents: I’d rate this book PG. There’s some violence, and some mild language, and a couple of non-explicit sexual situations (Vimes and Lady Sybil are married, after all). However, it’s nothing worse than what you might see on an episode of House or Smallville. Of course, you should use your own discretion when it comes to your children.
The concept of “based upon Book X by Author Y” is stretched pretty far these days. Sure, sometimes you get a Harry Potter or a Twilight, but other times you get a movie or TV show that is so loosely-based on the source material that, if the book was a person and the TV show was a pair of jeans, the combination of the two would violate the saggy-pants bans that are in effect in several states.
I mention this because I watch the TV show Haven. In the opening credits and most of the promotional material for season one, the producers hit “based on The Colorado Kid by Stephen King” pretty hard. When I first saw the promos, I figured, okay, this should be somewhat interesting. And it is; I happen to enjoy Haven, even if I’m still concerned they won’t be able to wrap up everything from this season in the upcoming finale*.
But it’s not based on The Colorado Kid. Not really. Because here’s what the two works have in common:
They take place in Maine.
They both have small-town newspapermen Vince and Dave.
There’s a bar/restaurant called The Grey Gull.
The policeman’s last name is Wuornos.
So, saying Haven is based upon The Colorado Kid is, in my opinion, a little disingenuous. Especially since Haven is quite clearly a genre show, while The Colorado Kid is a straight-up mystery novella.
The Colorado Kid is mostly a story-within-a-story. The main character, Stephanie, is a journalism student working an internship in Moose-Lookit (a small island in Maine, at least an hour away from Bangor), at the local paper — a weekly run by Dave Bowie and Vince Teague. After a few months on the island — which is so small that it and so inaccessible that older students need to take the ferry to get to and from high school every day — Stephanie has been accepted by the town and by her bosses. In other words, she’s no longer an outsider.
One day toward the end of her internship, Stephanie, Vince, and Dave host a reporter from the Boston Globe who’s writing a series of features on unexplained mysteries of New England. After he’s gone, Stephanie learns that Moose-Lookit does indeed have an unexplained mystery, but it’s not the kind of thing Vince and Dave feel comfortable telling the Globe about.
Instead, they tell Stephanie the entire story, and that’s the main plot of The Colorado Kid: who was the man found dead on the beach, who killed him, and why?
Throughout the whole book, I kept waiting for the King twist — what was the supernatural aspect going to be? What kind of monster would end up being the killer? And, because Haven was ostensibly based on the book, when was I going to read about “the troubles”?
Answers: it wasn’t a monster, and never.
Because The Colorado Kid is a straight-up mystery.
I’m not going to say I was disappointed with the story, because I really wasn’t (although the ending was a bit of a head-scratcher). I think the issue was more that I went into it expecting one thing and I got something totally different. I was primed for a supernatural story — I’ve read several of King’s other stories, novellas, and novels, and it’s pretty well-known that he writes mostly genre fiction — and the fact that Haven was based on the book (or so I’d been repeatedly told by the show’s promotional material) made me more-or-less ready for one.
In the end, I’ll say this: if you like Stephen King’s style of writing, you’ll probably like this book. If you like mysteries, you might like this book, although you’ll probably do some head-scratching, just like I did. But if you go into it expecting a sci-fi, fantasy, or horror story, or a story anything like the television show Haven, The Colorado Kid will probably disappoint you. It’s a pretty good story, but it’s not a genre story.
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Note to Parents: The book contains some gross-out scenes, especially during the autopsy, but is otherwise acceptable for most teenage audiences. They’ll probably think it’s boring, but there’s nothing objectionable. Of course, you should use your own discretion when it comes to your children.
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*I wrote this before the season finale. It did… pretty well, actually.
This is the tenth and final article in a ten-part retrospective of the Harry Potter soundtracks. You may wish to refer to the previous entries in the series for more information.
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Eight soundtracks. Four composers. A ten-year cycle of music and magic. And now, my list of the eight soundtracks, in order of preference:
Goblet of Fire by Patrick Doyle — After the three soundtracks from John Williams, the franchise was ready for a change, and they got it with Doyle. Incorporating consistent themes throughout the soundtrack, he was able to create an entirely new character using the music, and if a few tracks didn’t really fit the rest of the album, as a piece of art it was, to my mind, the best of them. Favorite tracks: “The Story Continues”, “Foreign Visitors Arrive”
Deathly Hallows, Part 2 by Alexandre Desplat — I actually think this soundtrack had better composition than Goblet, but Goblet is still my favorite. Still, DH2 is a close second thanks mostly to Desplat’s use of cycles in addition to themes. Favorite Tracks: “Lily’s Theme”, “Courtyard Apocalypse”
Prisoner of Azkaban by John Williams — Potter finally gets mature and serious with Williams’s third and final soundtrack, and although the middle of the album feels a little muddled, the finale makes up for it in spades. Favorite Tracks: “Buckbeak’s Flight”, “Finale”
Sorcerer’s Stone by John Williams — I’m surprised at myself for not ranking this soundtrack more highly, especially since it introduced “Hedwig’s Theme” (the musical theme most associated with Harry Potter), but it just didn’t resonate with me the same way the first three on the list did. It was too light in tone, I think. Favorite Tracks: “Hedwig’s Theme”, “The Quidditch Match”
Deathly Hallows, Part 1 by Alexandre Desplat — Excellent uses of themes and a great battle sequence overcame a rather annoying tendency to score fugues, sustains, and accents over the main body of the music. Favorite Tracks: “Obliviate”, “Polyjuice Potion”
Half-Blood Prince by Nicholas Hooper — Hooper really redeemed himself with this after what I felt was a lackluster effort in Phoenix, and I certainly enjoyed the soundtrack. It’s just that the others were even better. I also don’t think Hooper had a lot to work with in what is probably the worst of the Potter films. Favorite Tracks: “Opening”, “Dumbledore’s Farewell”
Chamber of Secrets by John Williams — While the general tone of the soundtrack was less juvenile than Stone, the film itself was too slapstick-y in too many places to really justify a truly dark soundtrack. Williams did the best with what he had. Favorite Tracks: “The Dueling Club”, “Reunion of Friends”
Order of the Phoenix by Nicholas Hooper — No real cohesive theme, a jumbled bunch of cues, a soundtrack out-of-order from the film, and far too much repetitiveness overshadowed Hooper’s clear talent at creating memorable musical phrases. Favorite Tracks: “Flight of the Order of the Phoenix”, “The Ministry of Magic”
And, finally, my favorite track out of all eight Harry Potter soundtracks:
“Flight of the Order of the Phoenix” by Nicholas Hooper. As I said above, Hooper definitely knows how to write music that you’ll remember and enjoy. He just swung and missed with the Order of the Phoenix soundtrack as a whole. Tell me you can click that link and not remember the flight through night-time London and I’ll… well, I don’t know. I’ll do something, I guess.
Anyway…
I think it’s really hard to do a soundtrack that completely misses the mark. I can’t remember a single one I’ve listened to that actually pulled that off. However, in re-listening to these eight soundtracks, I’ve come to the conclusion that a good soundtrack needs a few cohesive themes, not too much crazy orchestration, and the ability to make listeners re-enact the film’s scenes in their heads if they’re not actually watching the movie. Most of the Potter soundtracks do all three of those things — they all do at least two. I count that as a rousing success for the studio, the films, and the composers.
And now, as your reward for making it this far, here’s a little bonus: three of my favorite Wizard Rock songs, in video form, all by Ministry of Magic:
This is the ninth article in a ten-part retrospective of the Harry Potter soundtracks. You may wish to refer to the previous entries in the series for more information.
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Given that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is a direct continuation of the seventh film, and given that it was orchestrated by the same composer, Alexandre Desplat, as its predecessor, and given that we jump right into the story after only a few minutes of info-dump, I figure I can skip all the explanations about who the composer is and what I thought of his previous works both in and out of the Potterverse.
So, here we go.
Deathly Hallows 2 is the only Potter film I’ve not seen multiple times, and that’s only because I have no desire to buy another ticket. Therefore, my memory of exactly what occurs when may be slightly off. But I am certain that the opening track, “Lily’s Theme”, as well as the one just after it, “The Tunnel”, both contain the two main musical phrases heard throughout the soundtrack. The former is the sad/reflective music for the film, and the latter is the tense music. In fact, I thought that Desplat really kept the music for this film quite simple in terms of its thematic elements; the same cues are repeated throughout, even more so than in the first soundtrack. In some ways, that could be considered a detriment to the soundtrack, but on the other hand, having constant themes throughout helps tie the film together and doesn’t make a viewer have to think about what the music is supposed to mean*
If I have a problem with Desplat’s use of consistent themes in the soundtrack, it’s that the themes only slightly tied together with those from the previous. If viewers are supposed to consider the two films a single, four-and-a-half-hour piece of cinematic art, why wouldn’t the themes be more unified. Contrast it with Star Trek II and Star Trek III, with both soundtracks composed by James Horner. II’s main cue, heard during the opening credits, contained sections that became the main cue for III. Moving from DH1 to DH2, the only real cue I recognized off the bat was the quick violin bed used under much of the rest of the soundtrack and first heard in DH1’s “Snape to Malfoy Manor”.
Other notable cuts from this soundtrack include:
“Dragon Flight” — Desplat mixes “Hedwig’s Theme” with “Lily’s Theme” in a nice way here, fading down toward the end after the Golden Trio jumped off the dragon.
“Neville” — This track gives us insight into the importance of Neville throughout the film. Because of the way the books had to be cut down, we really missed out on some of Neville’s moments throughout the film series, but Desplat reuses portions of “Ministry of Magic” and “Polyjuice Potion” from the previous film to great effect, giving Neville his own theme that returns in his three major scenes.
“In the Chamber of Secrets” — Again Desplat reworks “Hedwig’s Theme”, and appropriately, since we’re in a place from early on in the series. Once the tempo picks up, I kind of lose interest because it gets too wild and annoying, but the parts before that are good.
“Neville the Hero” — You see it happening in your mind’s eye as you listen. No composer can ask for anything more. Plus, for a film that hasn’t had a whole lot of happy moments, Desplat pulls out a good triumphant theme.
This soundtrack is more about cycles than themes, though — I counted at least three of them. I approve of that style of orchestration — giving the major climactic sequence of the film its own series of specific themes and cues (all of them at least somewhat derivative of the other themes already established in the movie). The first is the Battle Cycle, which begins in “Statues”, using that track and “The Grey Lady” to set themes that are heard again in “Battlefield”, “Courtyard Apocalypse” (one of my favorites on the album), and “Showdown” (which brings in the cues established early in the film before hitting the Battle Cycle themes). It ends with, rather appropriately, “Voldemort’s End”, which, musically, you can kind of tell just by listening to that the hero is about to triumph before it actually happens. If anything, I think the actual death scene was kind of weak, and the composer didn’t have a lot of time or a lot of commensurate action on the screen to really give us the kind of death music Vodlemort deserved.
Another highly-anticipated series of scenes has music that I’m calling the Snape Cycle. It begins with “A New Headmaster” — not really a great track per se, but I did like the way he used “Hedwig’s Theme” and some orchestral stylings vaguely reminiscent of the first couple of films to remind us how we felt when we first saw Hogwarts and help to underscore how we feel now, seeing Snape in charge**. We’re reintroduced to it with “Snape’s Demise”, and Snape himself gets “Hedwig’s Theme” as well as “Lily’s Theme” — Desplat tries to foreshadow what’s coming using music, because it certainly wasn’t foreshadowed in any of the earlier films. Then we get “Severus and Lily”, which probably could’ve been called “Snape’s Redemption (for everyone who didn’t figure it out already)”. It’s this film’s “The Deathly Hallows”.
Finally, there’s the Harry Cycle — “Harry’s Sacrifice”, “The Resurrection Stone”, and “Harry Surrenders”. These are a little more juvenile-sounding — it’s the bells — but the underlying bass notes let you know that something really bad is about to happen***. There’s also an annoying chorus. Nothing against choral singers, but again… overused. “Harry Surrenders” is a little more like the Battle Cycle, but it fits.
If the soundtrack failed anywhere for me, it’s with the final track, “A New Beginning”. It was too light, too airy, and not nearly moody enough to really capture the end of an era. I’m extremely disappointed that we didn’t get something like this at the end of the film.
Desplat still uses the “additional instrument playing a fugue or series of accents over the rest of the orchestra” technique that I wasn’t so much a fan of last time around, but I was expecting it this time, and I figured it was worth overlooking because… let’s be honest… this is my second-favorite of the Potter soundtracks after Goblet of Fire. I mean, it’s a big job to be told “your music is going to be associated with the end of what is possibly the biggest film franchise of the past two decades.” The composer pulled out all the stops and gave us an excellent soundtrack which included consistent themes, callbacks to previous soundtracks, and an intriguing use of cycles to move the listener from place to place in the film, making sure that the right mood is kept even if scenes aren’t adjacent.
This soundtrack was most definitely a fitting end to the Harry Potter film series. And it’s absolutely worth listening to again. I’ll definitely be keeping my ears open when I see the film next time.
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*Which isn’t to say that I didn’t notice the music throughout, because I did. But then, I do that sort of thing.
**Okay, seriously? At this point, how could anyone possibly still think Snape was the bad guy? Show of hands?
***And, again, why didn’t Rowling just kill Harry? Imagine how much more powerful that would’ve been! Why the whole King’s Cross BS? WHY?
Let’s say there’s a secret school populated by a secret subculture of people living in a world alongside ours. Let’s say there’s a kid who has no idea this subculture exists, but he’s been doing things that would bring it to his attention. Let’s say that, one day, he’s accepted into this secret school, where he’s the smartest kid in his year, naturally good at everything, and has some sort of special connection to the head of the secret school.
You’d think you’d know what the story’s about and how it ends, wouldn’t you. You’d think you’re reading Harry Potter, or The Magicians, or Percy Jackson.
But let’s say the secret school is the place where the next generation of super-villains learns everything they need to know about the future of world domination. Changes things a bit, doesn’t it?
Umm… maybe not.
H.I.V.E.: Higher Institute of Villainous Education, by Mark Walden, is the first in a (so far) seven-book young-adult series of novels that borrows from the well-traveled genre tropes that gave us the three books I mentioned a few paragraphs ago.
H.I.V.E.‘s main character, Otto Malpense, is a white-haired thirteen-year-old British boy with the uncanny ability to comprehend everything he reads and understand the underlying principles of everything he sees. In general, he’s more a pragmatist than a villain — he came to the attention of H.I.V.E. not because he did something evil for evil’s sake, but because he was trying to save the orphanage that was the only home he’d ever known. It just so happened to involve making the British Prime Minister look like an idiot.
Otto’s contemporaries can be picked out of most any genre lineup:
Wing Fanchu, an Asian boy who’s good at martial arts and is very honorable.
Laura, a Scottish girl good with technology.
Shelby, an American cat burglar.
Nigel, the kid who’s there because his father was a super-villain and is only good at one class — go on, guess which one*.
Franz, an overweight German kid who only talks about food and is also not very good at most classes, although he takes quickly to the ones teaching students how to use politics and economics to take down the good guys.
Other than Nigel and Franz, Otto and his classmates are not happy to be at H.I.V.E. They think they’ve been kidnapped by the school’s headmaster, Dr. Nero, and all they want to do is get home. But to do that, they’ll have to fight off another genre lineup, this one comprised of schoolteachers:
The headmaster who “takes an interest” in the main character.
The absent-minded technology professor.
The drill sergeant who teaches physical education.
The one who was turned into an animal.
The second-in-command who also can control your mind.
The artificial intelligence/computer system that sees everything and knows everything, but really just wants to be human (and if it starts performing Shakespeare or tries to hold Commander Riker hostage in one of Dr. Crusher’s plays in a future novel, I’m hanging it all up now).
So far, I’ve given H.I.V.E. a lot of grief over its use of genre conventions, but I hope I’ve done it good-naturedly enough to keep you from being put off the book. I mean, it’s YA; it’s sort of YA’s job to use genre conventions to make characters relatable and understandable. And the story itself is something most kids can understand: being taken from your home because you’re special, but once you get away, all you want is to go back again. I mean, come on, how many of us (when we were kids***) have thought “I’m smarter/better/awesomer than this life I’m currently leading; when will I get to go to that secret school for wizards/villains/demigods?” I mean, you wouldn’t believe how hard I wished to be pulled 300 years into the future so I could go to Starfleet Academy.
It didn’t happen, obviously****. Hence my love for genre fiction (escapism) and a fondness for stories using the genre plot we see in H.I.V.E.
The storytelling is pretty good. The characters are well-rounded and often funny. The adventure is… um… adventurous. If anything is poorly-done, it’s the occasional forays into Dr. Nero’s world — we need them to forward the plot and explain whatever couldn’t be infodumped by the Contessa (Professor McGonagall) during the school tour, but they take away from the important part of the story, which is Otto and his friends. When Rowling did it in the Harry Potter novels, she confined it to the first few chapters, sort of a “meanwhile, back at the Hall of Justice” thing before we got into whatever adventure Harry is facing in the current book, and I could handle that. But the whole point of third-person-limited is that you only see things through the eyes of your main character, and I think that, by using the Dr. Nero scenes to explain important plot points, the story misses out on the opportunity for more adventures or further characterization of our heroes. For example, they could’ve overheard Nero’s staff dinner because Laura was working on an extra-credit project or something, instead of the author just showing us said dinner.
Of course, that could also have just been a homage to your old-school heroes-vs-villains TV shows and movies where the hero’s journey is briefly put aside to show what the bad guys are doing right now.
I rather enjoyed H.I.V.E., to be honest. I think the storytelling moves at a good clip, the characters are funny, and the idea behind the story is novel enough that I’m interested in reading more books in the series. As a YA book, it reads quickly enough, and is short enough, that you can probably squeeze it into a week’s worth of lunch breaks. I’m not sure how the “intended” audience — young adults — would actually like it, but I know that I got a kick out of it, and I think you will too.
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Note to Parents: Because it’s a YA novel, H.I.V.E. doesn’t contain anything truly objectionable. There’s some bullying and some violence, but nothing more explicit than, say, Prisoner of Azkaban. So, if your kids can handle that, they can definitely handle H.I.V.E.. Of course, you should use your own discretion when it comes to your children.
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*If you said “Herbology”… err, that is, Botany, give yourself a pat on the head.
**The one who is fairly nice and takes care of students who don’t feel like they belong. Also, she teaches Herbology. I mean Botany. Oh, whatever, it’s Professor freaking Sprout from the Harry Potter novels. Just go with it.
This is the eighth article in a ten-part retrospective of the Harry Potter soundtracks. You may wish to refer to the previous entries in the series for more information.
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Keen-eyed Facebook users may vaguely remember a group created shortly after Half-Blood Prince called Draft Nobuo Uematsu to Score Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Uematsu, you may know, is the composer of the Final Fantasy series of video games, and if you’ve heard his work, you know he’s perfectly capable of doing an entire film.
Well, we didn’t get Uematsu. Instead, we got Alexandre Desplat, well-known in France for many films with French names, and in America for The Golden Compass, The King’s Speech, and, for some reason New Moon. The studio hired Desplat to score the final two films — a good idea, given that they’re really just one four-and-a-half-hour movie with a little extra exposition in the middle — and he created. Because there are two separate films, I’ve separated the review into two separate articles. (Lots of separation there, I know.) This one focuses on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1.
The score begins with “Obliviate”, a perfect musical backdrop to the beginning of the film, especially when Hermione casts the spell. It contains two themes: the four-note theme of the film (heard in almost every track in some form) along with a more-sweeping eight-note extension of same. The two themes are clearly heard throughout the film. Immediately after “Obliviate”, we get the four-note theme again, but this time descending instead of ascending, indicating that evil is afoot — and, I mean, it’s “Snape to Malfoy Manor”, so, yeah. Evil. And then we get another theme — a happier one — in “Polyjuice Potion”.
Clearly you can see why I enjoyed this soundtrack. The composer is fully aware of the whole point of using a theme throughout the movie. He did leave off “Hedwig’s Theme” until the end of the third track, but with so many other themes, it’s rather like what I said about Patrick Doyle’s Goblet of Fire soundtrack. He does rather adeptly mix “Hedwig’s Theme” in with his own themes in “Sky Battle” — probably the most exciting part of the film, and the music reflects that.
Other tracks I enjoyed include:
“Ministry of Magic” — This little sequence got its own “wizards doing wizard stuff” theme, although much more sinister, with the use of wooden clicky instruments (imagine several people hitting drumsticks together at the same time; I don’t know what they’re called) and a percussion part that’s like a ticking clock. Of course, now that we know the Ministry isn’t exactly doing their part to defeat Voldemort, the theme makes perfect sense.
“Lovegood” — Suitably weird, for use with all Quibbler publishers and Deathly Hallows enthusiasts. In the next paragraph, I do complain a little about the technique Desplat uses in this track, but in this particular track, I felt the effect worked well.
“Farewell to Dobby” — Let’s be honest: very few people who only saw the films probably appreciated Dobby. Even in the books, he was annoying. In fact, only Ministry of Magic managed to make me care about him with their song “Evanesco Dobby”. But as a cut to basically end the film, this track contains all the themes and all the foreboding that is necessary to close out the first half. A very nice track (despite the violin fugue at the end).
I was a little less impressed with the middle part of “Harry and Ginny”, which gives kind of a strangely-tempo’d and uncomfortable balletic violin hit to a nice piano rendition of the happier theme from “Polyjuice Potion”. He uses a similar tempo technique in “Dobby” that felt a little out-of-place. Then there’s the obligatory use of chorus to indicate “holy crap, danger for our heroes in the first act, which means get excited although none of them are going to die” (“Fireplaces Escape”); choral parts get overused, I think, in film scores. And, in “Ron Leaves”, the soap-opera-y violin part over the top is… well… over the top. And I think that’s the only major issue I have with this soundtrack: Desplat has an annoying tendency to put another instrument playing a fugue or sustain over the main part of the orchestra. I counted at least four tracks it happened in within the first half of a 29-track album.
I also didn’t care for “The Exodus”, but mostly because it was a montage of Harry, Ron, and Hermione going camping a lot and negative memories of that part of the film and book probably affected it. Also, the violin part annoyed my ears (though, if you listen carefully, you can just barely hear a John Williams-like musical phrase last heard in Chamber of Secrets… you’ll have to listen really hard, though, because it’s hidden pretty deeply in the orchestration).
Overall I was very pleased with Desplat’s soundtrack for the first half of Deathly Hallows. I was leery at first, but the studio really came through with a good choice for the film’s score, and I was quite looking forward to what he would do with Part Two. He proved he can do films, he can do homages, he can hint ahead at future tracks… basically, everything that I praised Patrick Doyle for — and, as I said, he wrote my favorite soundtrack of the series. But this one’s pretty good too.
After reading the book, I can say that I should find it funnier than I actually do. The style of humor is supposed to be right up my alley — Bigfoot is written as a self-deprecating, lonely guy who just wants to be understood, but occasionally gets angry about his life or the state of the world. I did laugh a few times, but mostly I just found it generally amusing in the way one finds the comedy club emcee’s jokes generally amusing.
