Review: "The Man in the High Castle" • Season I

The first season of "The Man in the High Castle" has its moments — including a fair share of dull moments. I enjoyed … most of it. (The scene where Ambassador Tagomi got a vision of the “real” San Francisco in 1961 was outstanding.) 

But the show didn’t hit that level very often. Don't get me wrong. I stuck with it to the final episode, and enjoyed most of it. But I wasn’t dancing on Cloud 9. 

So what's my beef?

Not the storytelling. (Strictly speaking, the cinematic adaptation of Philip K. Dick's story.) Film is film, words are words. When you translate static words to moving pictures, you can't be slavishly faithful to the original — but you can't be faithless to the story's spirit, either. That's especially tough for screenwriters adapting the writings of a gnostic, paranoiac, visionary SF writer like Dick. (I know. I’ve tried.) The filmmakers did a pretty good job here, though I have quibbles. They gave a nod to Dick's notion of fake authenticity. (A cottage industry of forging historical artifacts for the Japanese overlords.) It's a major element in his novel, but they glossed over it. But most of Dick's original story (and characters) came through—and the changes and expansions didn't stink. Some were great. Turning Abendsen's alternate history novel (which described our "real" reality) into actual WWII newsreel footage of Allied victories in "real" reality was brilliant visual storytelling. Not bad. But could've been better.

Not world-building, either. That's excellent. Frank Spotnitz and company did a fine job of nailing down the specifics of their alternate history. Loved the visualization of Albert Speer's godawful grandiose Berlin. Also the ephemera—Nazi ads, the squeaky clean pop music in a world where rock-and-roll was never born. Bravo.

So why the faint praise? What's my beef, already?

The show's main problem was pacing. Simple as that. The show's just too damn slow, and takes too long to get to the point. The creators dragged Dick's story out — and occasionally dragged it into the hideous alternate reality of Soap Opera Land.

I suspect that’s a symptom of wanting to leave enough story to mine for future seasons. But it made what should’ve been a gripping story occasionally tedious and slow.

How do you make an alternative history of a divided America ruled by Nazis and Imperial Japanese Overlords dull?

It's tough to do.

But at times they managed.

Thor: Ragnarok

"Thor: Ragnarok" delivers on its promise. Do I believe for five seconds that Asgard is a self-consistent alien culture? No. But it's a fun movie.
Thor Ragnarok did not disappoint. It lived up to the promise. You get to see Thor and the incredible Hulk in a gladiatorial situation
Sibling rivalry with Loki; Jeff Goldblum is hilarious. He’s the evil meia mogul who runs a corrupt, entertainment obsessed planet that behind the gladiatorial games. He delivers his evil disctator lines as, well, Jeff Golbulum and it’s hilarious 
The ovie strikes a nice balance between being a working class comedy – a lot of it’s just comedy
Thor is dealing with his ister, hwho happens to be the goddess of death, who’s escaped from the Phantom zone or Asgard maxium security or whatever) she’s the ultimate female gdaass. He throws the hammer at her she gtrabis it; the hammer shatters like glass.
Essentially, it’s the plot of the Shane Black’s iron man movie. Thor’s stripped of his powers , doesn’t have his powers, is exiled, imprisoned, and 
Not the king of the mountain.
Various things revealed later
But a nice comic dynamic – put him at the bottom of everyuthging in this trashy planet that’s strewen with literal garbage and garbage entertainment. He’s not the king of the mountain. He’s got a control device on his neck straight out of Star Trek 
It’s all in the grailer
Working class comic moments interspersed with a gumbo of Shakespearean/Lord of the Rings serious moments. 
Genuinely suspenseful on own terms
The bcillaineess is basically the evil queen from Snow White and the Seven Drwarfves.
Graeat female heroes and female villains it’s a post woneder  woman movie and the XX chromosome pair gets its due representation (Finally) Loki goes from being the dark creep of the second avengers movie to more of a trickster. 

Review: The Orville

Drive-by review: The Orville.

To boldly go where Gene Roddenberry and all his imitators have gone before.

OK. Finally started watching director/producer/lead actor Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville. (Checked out the pilot and 11 minutes of the second episode.) So here’s my reaction …

All-righty then. Yeah. Big Family Guy fan that I am, I want to like it. I see what MacFarlane s trying to do. I see what he actually succeeds in doing. So I want to give him a chance …

But a rude inner voice says, “You see what this is? This is Star Trek cosplay. That’s what this is. You see it, right?”

“Yeah, I see it.”

“You see the flaws?

My inner nitpicker points out the show’s synecdochal inconsistency*, the derivative nature of the experience, the creation of look-for-look’s sake (as opposed to internal logic) and the flat-out bad logic and bad design.

A starship captain would have some kind of monitor/interface at his station; it wouldn’t be in the armrest of his bloody chair. He would know if a certain single-sex species laid eggs. He wouldn’t joke about it with omelet references. Pseudo-Star-Fleet's important, remote science station would be able to send encrypted communications to HQ. (And if it were that important, it wouldn’t be that remote and vulnerable.) The interstellar bad guys would destroy, interdict or commandeer a shuttle on a rescue mission; they wouldn’t accept a killer device on the promise of an access code. On top of that ...
A futuristic hallway full of fluorescent lights? A science station that looks like a mall? What is this, Logan’s Run? 
Etc., etc.

My inner asshole points these things out. What can I say?

He’s right.

But there are things I like ...

The dynamic of making the starship commander’s unfaithful ex-wife his second officer is clever. Basic screwball comedy. Love it. Her tryst with a blue alien was hilarious—a nice reversal of the Captain Kirk trope.

I also appreciate the comedic rabbit that MacFarlane pulls out of his hat. Or dog.

As in the dog from MacFarlane’s Family Guy.

Captain Mercer is essentially Brian the Dog in space. (Close your eyes and listen to what MacFarlane’s character says. Imagine it’s Brian speaking. It’s funnier that way.) 
Good stuff. Though ...

My inner nitpicker has a point. I can't argue with the flaws he indicates. Each little flaw can be fixed.
But they all flow from one big flaw. 
An essential dilemma that might be unfixable.

The logic of comedy demands that Mercer be bad at his job. If it’s a Star Trek lampoon, the show must poke a pin in all the classic tropes.

The logic of fantasy role-playing demands that MacFarlane deliver a Captain Kirk imitation. Captain Mercer can’t be a f***-up. He must. Do. What must be. Done.

Either-or.

You can’t have it both ways.
Thus says my inner prosecuting attorney.
But my inner jury is still out. I'll give MacFarlane a chance. Who the hell knows?
Maybe he can.

*In written or filmed SF, synecdoche is a good thing. Take Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction.” The citizens of his future, irradiated New York City use subway tokens as currency. Leiber never says that these future New Yorkers hid out in the subway when their city was being A-bombed; he doesn’t have to. It’s a part that stands for the whole—synecdoche, my friends. A very good thing when done right. A very bad thing when the parts don’t add up, fit together or form a whole.

blade

"Blade Runner: 2049" is a brilliant extrapolation of screenwriter Hampton Fancher's brutal corner of the Philip K. Dick universe. 

By way of explanation ...

When a good screenwriter adapts a novel, they get into the mind of the author who wrote it. This is a dangerous occupation if the mind is visionary and/or insane.

PKD was a straight-up gnostic. He believed the physical universe was the Black Iron Prison. A trap created by a Demiurge—a fake god, putting on Daddy's shoes and feeding on souls ascending to the light. 

That's the mind Hampton Fancher got into. And the worldview that poured out of Fancer's typewriter. But not unedited.

A great screenwriter's never passive. "How can I make this better?" is the heresy in the back of your mind. 

Dick's original androids were soulless, unempathetic things. Roy Baty pulled the legs off a spider ... because why not? Humanity is empathy. Fake humanity has none.

Fancher retained that idea with a tweak. His replicants were a new model. Childlike, not soulless. Four year olds in adult bodies. They were learning empathy ... and on the verge of becoming truly human. This explained their four year life span. They had an expiration date, that shut them off before they became effectively human.

Aside from that change, and a tighter story structure, Fancher kept Dick's original ideas. The world he created was a hell realm of psychic cannibalism, eploitation and sickening utility.

Hamton Fancher's first draft was brutal.

Roy Batty sneaks into Tyrell's compound. Under the pretext of a gryphon his he's giving his daughter for her birthday party. Batty begins by crushing the pelvis of a butler, then slaughters everyone at the party. grabbing the butler in the groin then shattering his pelvis in his vice likke grip. Deckard kilsl raachel.

The movie is the Care Bears Happy Birthday funtime in comparison.

blade runner 2049 unfolds in the same universe. of Fancer's original scripty.

Charlie Manson is watching you

Avoid strong discussion. For that matter, avoid discussion.
Stay in your room.
Thatguy at the next table might have a gun.
Walk soft. Avoid eye contact.
Stay away from hot button issues in public places. The Vietnam War, gun control, religion, whatever.

Review: "9-11"

What if? In the right hands, the question can generate great stories. In the wrong hands, it can generate bad stories. For inexplicable reasons, some of these stories hit the best-seller list.
Case in point: Marty Fugate’s latest potboiler, “9-11.” Reading through this "near future thriller" (as I am paid to do) several questions spring to mind :
What if a hack writer decided to steal the plot of “The Anderson Tapes,” and expanded it to a geopolitical proportions in a style blatantly lifted from Tom Clancy?
What if …
A neophyte American president was sitting in the Oval Office? A cunning cabal of Arab terrorists (yawn) with engineering degrees was hiding in caves and devising a fiendish plot? A perfect storm of interdepartmental rivalry and compartmentalized intelligence, preventing any law enforcement official from acting on obvious warning signs of this unfolding conspiracy — including the piteous prophecies of the obligatory Cassandra? (With this theft, Mr. Fugate goes a bridge too far. Great writers steal. Bad writers cut-and-paste.) What if a handful of Arab terrorists (armed with box cutters!) hijacked three fully-fueled airplanes and turned them into deadly missiles on a suicide mission?
All of which ends in a successful terrorist attack on …
Wait for it.
The World Trade Center towers!!!
And the Pentagon.
This carnage described in 23 pages of gory detail. A disaster movie Irwin Allen would find in bad taste. (A film adaptation the author dearly and clearly hopes for.)
What if (being symbolically inclined) the aforementioned masterminds launched their attack on the day which corresponds to the American phone number to emergency responders?
What if these supposedly cunning terrorists targeted the same building they tried to demolish two years ago? A presumably well-guarded structure. As opposed to, say, a fresh target? Not the Sears Tower, the Chrysler building, the Pan Am building, no, it has to be the World Trade Center!! Why? Is this terrorism or an extreme form of architectural criticism?
What if an author utterly lacking in shame built a best-seller on the bones of the six victims of the 1993 bombing?
What if enough shameless readers bought his lousy book—and actually read it? Even though they weren’t being paid?
What if?

Days of Future Pest

When most people think of science fiction, they think of film and TV. This expensive realm recycleds a dozen or so plots. Humanity meets evil (or nice) aliens in space. Evil (or nice) aliens invades earth (sometimes in disguise). Humanity fights the aliens, either on space or on the earth. Robots (or computers) take over the world. Thanks to global warming, over-population, bio weapons, an asteroid, nukes, or whatever The world goes to hell. Humanity meets (or becomes) God in space. That’s pretty much it.

What looks new on the screen is sometimes just new to the audience.

Like light from a distant star, it’s only now reaching the eyeballs of sci-fi fanboys.

Like the genre conventions of Raymond Chandler’s detective fiction. Like …

Or, God help us, cowboy stories. Like …

Or, may the Force have mercy, the crappy hackneyed sci-fi serials of the 1930s and 40s—which George Lucas recycled (with a mythological paint job courtesy Joseph Campbell) for 1970s audiences with short memories. Who thought they were looking at something new..

Much to the weeping and gnashing of teeth of the new wave SF writers who were trying to make a living at the time.

Literary science fiction (aka imaginative literature) ius light years ahead of the flickering image. Some of the best s-f short stories and novels have never made it to the big or small screen.

Most sf readers can give you a short list. Or a long oe.. Ringworld, The Forever War, Snow Crash, Neuromancer, Solaris, Bood Music, The Eclipse Triogy, Last and First Men

When they do, there’s usually a thirty year gap. And there’s usually a rip-off.

Science fiction is a literature of ideas. It evokes the unimaginable—which becomes pedestrian when filmmakers are forced to imagine it and put it up on screen.

Science fiction (to pass on a tired observation from the past, is usually about the present.

Some writers extrapolate societies. (Orwell, Burgess, etc.) Gadgets bore them. There stuff is more sociological fiction than science fiction.

Some writers genuinely think about the impact of technology on societies.

Some writers are more interested in tech than people.

Some sci-curious writers jump into bed with both humans and hardware.

Some bring the sharp knifes of Kafka and Borges to a sci-fi playing field. For a nice game of metaphysical mumblety-peg.

Or play the literary glass bead game with Nabakov and Punchon.

And then there’s this core of SF writers who want to write “deeply human stories” that just happen to be science fiction. And might as well not be.

Review: Alien Covenant

You want me to tell you the good things? I could go on and on ...

Spectacular movie! Gob-smacking visuals! Masterful world-building with precisely imagined details! A taut, science-literate script nearly free of plot holes! Excellent dialog, plausible motives, characters you care about! Great acting, too! Yes, all-in-all, a towering creative achievement. Great movie, master Ridley! 

But it depressed the living shit out of me.

Spoiler alert. If you fanboys want to avoid spoilers, stop reading and watch a rerun of Firefly. I will ruin it for you. You have been warned. To start with ...

As Newt was killed in Alien3, so Elizabeth Shaw is offed in Alien Covenant. Y'all find this out later.

As our voyage beings, a deep-space vessel called "The Covenant" is space-shlepping a contingent of astronauts, embryos and colonists someplace somewhere. Walter, Weyland-Yutani's new improved non-sociopathic android, is minding the store while the humans cryo-sleep. 

Then an ion flre fucks with the ship's exquistely rendered gold solar sails! 

In obedience to his "Don't Die in Space" programming, Walter wakes up the core crew. Minus the captatin, who hideously burns to death in his sleep pod. As his poor wife, Daniels, watches.

In this "What-the-fuck-just happened?" moment, the crew encounters a signal. Somebody somewhere is singing John Denver's Country Road. Holy crap! That right there should tell you to make tracks in the opposite direction. But no.

The Covenant makes tracks to a planetoid. The one where the late Ms. Shaw crash landed. 

After several chest-bursting, face hugging, spine ripping incidents, you discover that her android pal, David, engineered the bloody xenomorphs. 

Yep. This Wagner-loving android bastard (who always resembled a smiling face in a Hitler youth poster) figures humanity ain't got what it takes. But he does. 

Upon learning of this genocidal ambition, Walter, the new-improved, non-sociopathic android, does battle with David. Scott cruelly witholds the outcome of the fight. But you know, in this crapsack universe, good is too good to be true. And it ain't.

After some dramatic misdirection that (snicker) implies good triumphs over evil, you discover that ...

After winning the fight, David impersonates Walter. Then he tucks the surviving astronauts into cryosleep. In her final moments of consciousness, poor traumatized Daniels realizes that Walter ain't David. Then she's out out out. 

David promptly regurgitates some xenomorph embroyos. Then puts 'em in the cryostorage unit along with the human embroys. And continues on his merry way to the new colony.

On a scale of one to ten, with one being "The Wizard of Oz" and ten being "Funny Games" ...

I'd rate this a ten.

False Flag Zombie

She ran into the alley. The goddamn thing followed her. A 227^th generation drone, spherical, elegant, its humming turboprops tucked away, onboard AI constantly correcting for its ridiculously shitty aerodynamics. It looked like a fucking photomicrograph of a virus magnified 500,000 times. Which was ironic.

Because the thing was designed to inoculate.

Against.

Viruses.

Well, more specifically, The Virus. We’ll get back to that.

Anyway, like I was saying, the goddamn thing followed her, cornered her, grabbed her left arm like an abusive high school gym teacher, and stuck the needle in. After a mist of disinfectant, of course.

Then withdrew the needle.

And misted her arm with a numbing Something. Procaine. Bactine, for all she knew.

Then it hovered back, about a meter. Studied her.

She held up her left hand and gave it the finger.

The middle finger on her left hand above her left wrist, a wrist encircled with a blue rubberoid bracelet resembling the wristbands of ancient music festivals.

She abused the orb in her usual trash-talking fashion. A limited, if expressive, vocabulary.

“Goddamn you, you stupid fucking thing, I’ve already been vaccinated! See? You goddamn stupid fucking …”

She bent down, picked up a random hunk of metal, then threw it at the damn thing. It easily ducked. Just a zip to the left. Studied her for a second. Then hovered away with the faint humming sound of 500 bees trapped in a coffee can.

“I’m a citizen!” she screamed. “I have rights!”

Sure you do. On an old yellow piece of paper in a glass case somewhere. Parchment. Whatever.

But The Virus was serious business.

A constantly mutating pathogen that—wait for it—was the scientifically proven etiology for full-on zombie behavior! (Based on double-blind, peer-review studies under the aegis of the National Center for Disease Control. Seriously.) Flesh-eating, brain chomping, gibbering rage, etc., etc.

Rage? Ah ...

You’re probably thinking that sounds like that old “movie.”

Thing is, the zombification induced by the actual real-world Virus did not resemble the dreams of Romero, Raimi, Boyle, et al.

Their fictional, filmic zombies had a digital, on-off, all-or-nothing quality. Brother, you either is a zombie or you ain’t. Dead, living, undead. The peas never touched the mashed potatoes.

But the real-life zombies had irritating complications, interpenetrations, grey areas, and contradictions.

The Virus didn’t always present. In asymptomatic mode, you could carry The Virus and go about your merry like any other Joe Shmoe until the inevitable breakout. In the manner of herpes, the zombie symptoms could randomly present—and then go dormant again. When a breakout broke out, there were a full range of manifestations from “Aggggh, he’s ripping out my intestines,” to “Bob, I don’t think you’re not really contributing to this meeting.”

And there was a cure.

But.

27 gawkers witnessed the woman’s humiliation and recorded it with cams in their eyeglasses, wrists, and nostalgic “fones” the size of Pop-Tarts. 157 security cams also captured the outrage from a host of angles.

The “woman” turned out to be Alice Vivian Wallace of Huntington Beach, California. Artist type, one of those neo-punk "authenticists" who scorned NT. Not that good, but her face let her get away with murder. She’d been doing some artsy-fartsy shit involving Gorilla Glue and acetone and had killed her pretty blue bracelet in the process. The sentinel didn’t read it when she came out of the bar. So it chased her into the alley and poked her. Just a goddamn accident.

Or so they’d like you to believe.

Mr. Jones did something to his face. An expression like a constipated iron monkey. Or deep sadness and concern. It’s open to interpretation.

“I’m angry. I’m so angry. You want to watch this one more time? No. You don’t. I don’t. It’s an ugly scene, people. But we’re going to watch it.”

He replayed the footage of Alice’s humiliation for his 575 million followers.

“Why?”

He rolled his eyes and spread his hands with idiotic incomprehension. Theater folks call that “indicating.” But Mr. Jones followers would use the term “sincerity.”

“That’s the question nobody’s asking!” he screamed. “Why are They doing this? Why?”

Following in the footsteps of his ancestors, Mr. Jones went on to speculate.

A zombie plague appears out of nowhere at the dawn of the 22^nd century? How is that even possible?

Before 2117, these so-called “zombies” only existed in “movies,” “TV” and various other primitive media platforms. There were no zombies in real life.

Are we supposed to believe a bunch of corrupt Hollywood filmmakers predicted the future? Were they prophets, ladies and gentlemen?

Mr. Jones found that highly unlikely.

But what if this was a false flag operation?

Mr. Jones found that far more probable.

And went on to advance his thesis.

The zombie plague was engineered! A manifestation of our deepest fears—fears no doubt planted in a systematic disinformation campaign stretching back to the last century, perhaps before!

Who benefits?

Mr. Jones answered his own question.

“The government, that’s who! These so-called “zombies” give ‘em total control! They get to track us! They get to put their poison in our bloodstreams! They get to destroy our very identity as free Americans!”

He replayed the clip of Alice’s vain protest.

I’m a citizen! I have rights!

Mr. Jones did that thing with his face again.

“No Alice, you’re not. We’re not “citizens” anymore. We’re lab rats!”

Then he qualified that statement.

If Americans continued to run Their little maze, these decent folks would continue to be lab rats. If Americans fought back, they’d be, you know, Americans again.

Mr. Jones went on to point out that increased rates of autism and impotence were directly, uh, correlated to the forced vaccinations for the zombie plague. Some scientist somewhere proved it. They ruined his life, of course.

“And you know what happened next. The idiots who streamed his shit ripped off their bracelets, burned down the clinics, and blasted the sentinels to pieces when they went after their children. Pretty soon, the zombie plague was unstoppable and civilization went to hell. So, to answer your question, that’s why we’re in this goddamn cave.”

“It’s all my goddamn fault,” sobbed Alice.
             He put his arm around her shoulder. Felt her warmth, the shuddering waves of pain shaking through her.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “Just stop.”

Of course, it sorta was.

But he didn’t want to say it.

Marty Fugate. Copyright 2017. All rights reserved.