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I want to play a shadowrun game here.

Just in time... Thank you.

#movie #review #Christmas #anime

Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View Review

Being a mild fan of Star Wars and a big fan of books I’ve read a few of the older franchise books and was interested when I spied Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View. A book to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Star Wars with forty short stories written by a gaggle of writers which basically tells the story of A New Hope but from various different perspectives ranging from a Tuscan Raider to the cantina bartender to a mouse droid aboard the Death Star.

Now there are few amazing gems in this book. Personally I cannot stop telling people about “The Sith of Datawork” by Ken Liu which is the story of the gunnery officer who ordered that the escape pod holding C-3PO and R2-D2 not to be shot trying to cover his tracks with the help of an ace fleet logistics liaison who explains the forms to fill out to in order to properly build a wall of deniability so that the gunnery officer doesn’t get into trouble. It’s clever and delightful and I audibly laughed several times while reading it. If you have no interest in buying this book then I urge you to go to your local library and find a copy just to read this one story.

“Beru Whitesun Lars” by Meg Cabot was also a favorite because of its genuinely warm and loving description of how Aunt Beru raised Luke Skywalker. And I also quite enjoyed “The Red One” by Rae Carson about the red droid whose head explodes, “Laina” by Wil Wheaton about a rebel father recording a message for his infant daughter that he’s just sent away to protect her, and “Grounded” by Greg Rucka about the chief mechanic at the rebel base.

As you would expect there are a handful of bad stories too but most of them were at least enjoyable to read though I did notice a common issue I had with many of them, which was that they seemed to bend over backwards to find a scene or character from Star Wars to include in the story, even if it didn’t really fit.

For instance, the story titled “You Owe Me a Ride” by Zoraida Córdova is about two twin bounty hunters who work for Jaba the Hutt who attempt to steal the Millennium Falcon but the first two thirds of the story tells how they visit Jaba’s palace, see the rancor, etc. The trip doesn’t really tell us much and felt like it served only to show things we would recognize from the movies. There are also far too many stories that take place in the cantina.

Far too many.

But if you are a fan of Star Wars it’s a fun ride and I’d recommend giving it a look if for nothing else just to see the weird, colorful perspectives these authors chose to tell their stories from.

Thank you.

#star wars #books #review

So I just saw Stalker (1979)

Whoa, ok. Where to start with Stalker?

Released in 1979, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, and written by brothers Arkandy and Boris Strugatsky based on their novel “Roadside Picnic.” Stalker is, to put it as simply as I can possibly attempt to, a hell of a crazy ride.

From one angle the film seems quite small and intimate as there are only three characters during the vast majority of Stalker’s two hour and forty minute runtime. It follows the titular Stalker, a mysterious guide leading the equally ambiguously named Professor and Writer far into the ominous, military guarded area known as the “Zone.” The Zone is the area around the fall of a meteor or alien thing (the film isn’t quite clear) which contains a room that people believe can make your deepest desire a reality.

Through the sometimes-too-lofty-for-my-taste dialogue we learn about our three protagonists, what they hope to gain in the room and more broadly what they believe of themselves, each other, and the world at large. And it’s probably no coincidence that the two people the Stalker is ferrying to the Room are a scientist and an artist. Two opposite perspectives. And the Stalker himself seems to fill a perspective between these two extremes, a more spiritual one.

But quite literally surrounding the intimate tale of obtaining your heart’s desire there is the Zone. What was once a town has been reclaimed by dense plant growth and endless pools of water covering the vestiges of what was: crumbling concrete of old building, rotting telephone poles, submerged floor tile. A place of mystery and magic, of quiet danger that seldom in the movie do we ever see in action but even still it exudes an air of unknown danger. As if it could strike you down at its whim.

The whole experience of Stalker is dense and slow. There was obviously great care put into each frame of the film and vast stretches of silence seem to be there to allow you to take in the post-apocalyptic beauty of the Zone, or to let the Zone take you!

I’m conflicted to say that I really felt the film’s length as I did notice how long it was going but I was none-the-less hooked by its alluring mystery. Every second of the film my head filled with more and more questions:

Who is the Stalker?

Will they make it out of the Zone?

Why spend all these resources guarding the Zone?

What, exactly, is going on?

Man that bomb looks like a thermos…

And only a very, very select few answers are ever given to anything. Nothing is clear cut, and even at the end of the film I have enormous trouble wrapping my head around the whole thing.

Stalker is definitely not a movie for everyone as I can certainly see it boring a great many people, and I can’t blame anyone for it. But it offers your mind a seemingly endless buffet of things to ponder and though I feel it’s maybe a little too vague and obtuse for me I’d certainly watch it again, especially if I had the opportunity to see it on the big screen.

Thank you.

#movie #first impression #stalker #1979 #russian #Andrei Tarkovsky